Offense Force Alpha: USS James T Kirk
by Ruchira
Summary: In 2406, Earth is attacked and the Federation declares war with the Nygleians. When the USS Kirk is commissioned as Offense Force Alpha's flagship, their first mission turns out to be anything but routine.
1. Chapter 1: Prelude

**Offense Force Alpha: USS James T. Kirk**

_Summary: The Federation declared war with the Nygleians, a species from the far reaches of the Beta Quadrant, in 2406. Almost immediately thereafter, Offense Force Alpha, an elite group of single-pilot fighters, was commissioned in order to change the face of the war. When four years went by without any change--positive or negative--the _USS James T. Kirk_ was built to serve as the flagship of OFA._

_Disclaimers: I obviously do not own the Star Trek franchise. There are also some characters in here that I don't own. Too bad. I'd be pretty rich if I did._

_A/N: I tried to make this fit in with canon as much as possible (as far as it extends; obviously, this story takes place many years after _Voyager_ returned to Earth). Don't hesitate to point out if there are some things I messed up on._

_Anyway, enjoy the story._

* * *

_Stardate 83088.9  
__Alpha Quadrant, sector 001  
__Sol system  
__Berlin, Earth_

Cadet Abbey Paris stepped up to the chalking station and reached into the bowl, covering her hands and grips in the white powder. Removing them, she rubbed the powder against her bare feet, shaking off the excess. The entire process was so routine, she never thought about it anymore. She reached into the bowl again, again coating her hands in the chalk.

She glanced over to the team area, seeing the other girls talking amongst themselves, drinking from their water bottles, reliving great and terrible moments that had happened only moments before. Only one was looking back at her, Ezera, her fellow first classman and the one she beat out for team captain. The expression on the Zevian's face was not a pleasant one, and Paris quickly looked away.

She saw her coach head back to the team area from the judge's table. His eyes fell on her, and he nodded his head. She nodded in return. It was the coach's job to inform the judges which vault the gymnast was performing. She hoped he told them the right one.

She clapped her hands together and watched the small particles of chalk explode from her hands and slowly drift to the floor. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves, and began counting down from fifty, in Klingon, another familiar ritual she performed before each event, without fail, for as long as she could remember.

Right around thirty-five, she glanced up, her eyes slowly ascending through the audience until they fell on a small group of three people. Her aunt Navi and cousin Christopher weren't planning on watching the prelims of her gymnastics championships, but it provided a much-needed diversion from John Torres' illness. She was glad they were there; when she was a kid, Navi was more of a mother to her than her own mother had been. She was eight when Christopher was born and had been afraid, in that typical eight-year-old manner, that Navi and Harry would forget about her in favor of their own son, but that hadn't been the case, and Christopher had been more of a younger brother than a cousin to her. Jake was also not originally planning on coming until finals, but his Nova Squadron leader had changed their scheduled time to go to the Academy Flight Range, and this would be the only chance he would have to see any of her competition.

Christopher was talking excitedly to Jake about one thing or another, making Abbey smile thinly. Ever since she announced her engagement to the half-Bajoran Nova Squadron navigator and parrises squares corner, Christopher had gone out of his way to try to impress Jake. In a way, Cadet Ren Jacosi was everything Christopher aspired to—successful Starfleet Academy cadet, talented pilot—_and in the end, the good guy always gets the girl_, she mused.

She pushed all thoughts of her family, both present and future, out of her head, turning to face the runway with a deep breath, rubbing excess chalk from her hands on her thighs. As focused as she was on her routine, she barely registered the announcer's words—_Abigail Paris, senior. Difficulty level 12.3. Paris entry, full turn on, backward triple salto with two and a half twists in the straight position off. _It was the highest difficulty vault in existence, and everything about it was hers, from the entry she invented—double salto onto the springboard with a turn and a half onto the vault—to the turns through the air, to the blind landing she sometimes stuck, and she was the only one in the known universe able to perform it. Unless there were other short girls out there with the strength of a quarter-Klingon, it would remain that way.

When she reached zero, she took another deep breath, rolled her shoulders back, raised her chin high, and extended her right hand above her head, her signal that she was ready to begin. A few seconds later, the green light above the judge's table went on, and she was off. _Faster, faster,_ she willed herself as she sprinted down the runway. _Round-off, back handspring, turn to the left, block_. To the audience, the event lasted only seconds. To her, it was an eternity, a lifetime of training building up to those few seconds.

She was upside down in the air, her head pointed toward the vault below, when her world began to fall apart in one concussive blast. She had been a competitive gymnast since she was four years old, and in those years had had some spectacularly bad landings for many reasons, mistakes that she had made that caused her to descend to the ground before she was ready. This time in, her execution was flawless, her height perfect. For the first time in seventeen years, it was the ground that reached her.

---

Ensign Omari Azad closed his eyes for a second, willing the destruction to be cleared by the time he opened them. No such luck. With a deep breath to steel himself, the fourth-year medical student grabbed one of his classmates and headed over to northern corner, which was buried under a pile of rubble.

"On three," he said, planting his feet as he got in position to raise a heavy beam. His classmate nodded, crouching to a similar position. "One, two, three." The two medical students lifted, moving aside the beam.

"I think we have someone here," Ensign Williams said. After seven hours of what had been billed as "search and rescue", he knew better than to get excited about that. There wasn't much rescuing going on in that athletic stadium.

Azad pulled out his tricorder to confirm that the tiny gymnast was dead. To his surprise, she wasn't. "She's alive!" he exclaimed. "Doc! Over here!" he shouted.

In seconds, the EMH appeared at his side, the only Mark-I still in operation, the former EMH from the _U.S.S. Voyager_. "What do you have?" he asked brusquely, not even wasting time for the answer as he continued to clear the rubble around the gymnast.

"I don't know," Azad admitted. "We were clearing out the rubble and saw her legs. I scanned her and found she's still alive."

The EMH nodded, barely hearing the words. "Oh, no," he murmured as he exposed her further. He recognized the gray and black leotard as one belonging to a cadet from Starfleet Academy San Francisco, just as he recognized the red stripe across her chest and upper arms as the markings of the team captain. Even without seeing her face, he knew it was Abbey Paris. He set his tricorder to her specific settings. "She has a ventricular bleed. We have to get her to the hospital immediately. Ensign Azad, contact Starfleet Medical, tell them we're bringing in Cadet Abigail Paris, then contact Dr. Naviana Torres and apprise her of the situation."

"Who, sir?"

"Dr. Torres," the Doctor repeated, working to stabilize his patient. "Specialist in hybrid neurology. She's the CMO on DS4, but she's on Earth for a family emergency. She'll need to be in on this."

"Aye." He moved aside to comm the admitting service at Starfleet Medical, then attempted to reach Dr. Torres.

"Sir," he said, returning. "Starfleet Medical is ready for the patient. I can't reach Dr. Torres, though."

The Doctor sighed before tapping his own combadge. "EMH to Dr. Torres." There was no response. "That's odd. She always has her combadge," he murmured before trying again.

"Sir, I'm hearing something over here," Ensign Williams called out, indicating the lines of mortalities, covered in sheets by the medics. "I think it's a combadge."

If he had a heart, it would have been pounding out of his chest. Quickly giving instructions to Azad, the EMH raced over to the lines of deceased, again tapping his combadge. He heard an answering chirp from under a sheet, and pulled it aside.

With all the damage from the alien weapons, there wasn't much left his old friend, but it was enough for the Doctor to recognize the hybrid neurologist. He hung his head sadly for a second, remembering the woman he had known since she was an Academy cadet. He had helped train her to be a doctor, before watching as she became the leading expert in her field. He was there when she married one of his former crewmates, joined in her frustrations when she thought she couldn't have children, and celebrated at the birth of her son. Twenty-seven years of professional association, camaraderie, and friendship.

"What a waste," he muttered sadly before straightening, a resolute expression on his face. Turning to the two confused medical students, he began barking out orders again. "Prepare Cadet Paris for transport. I want to see her in the OR within twenty minutes, and contact Captains Paris and Torres."

"What should we tell them?" Ensign Azad asked.

The Doctor looked at him, his eyes blank. "Tell them their daughter is in surgery," he said brusquely. He glanced down at the body at his feet, taking the time to pull the blanket back over her head. "I'll be the one to tell them that Navi is dead." His gaze returned to theirs, taking a moment to meet each pair of eyes. "Welcome to war, gentlemen."


	2. Chapter 2

_Stardate 87264.8  
__Alpha quadrant, sector 001  
__San Francisco, Earth_

The shuttle slowed almost imperceptibly as it approached its target, just enough to make its one passenger look up from the PADD she was working on. She glanced down at the land below her and smiled. It was exactly as she remembered, exactly as it should have been. There was a neighborhood, with houses that weren't too small or too large. The backyards were wooded, concealing their occupants from each other. The front yards were open, the perfect places for kids to come together and play—but if that weren't enough, there was a park right across the lane. It was only a few kilometers away from Starfleet headquarters, making it a popular place for Starfleet officers and their families. Young officers moved their families here to raise them, and the lone shuttle passenger was coming to visit a family that had done just that. That was over thirty years ago—the house had stayed the same, the neighborhood was the same, but everyone had grown up. She couldn't help the pang of nostalgia at the thought.

"You can let it down wherever you get the chance," Admiral Kathryn Janeway told her pilot, a young ensign less than a year out of the Academy. "And then you can go ahead and leave—I'll be here for several hours, and I know a way back."

"As you wish, Admiral," the ensign said. "There is a shuttle landing site in the park, if that's okay."

"That'll be perfect, Ensign. Thank you."

The admiral took a deep breath as she stepped out of the shuttle. She didn't visit as often as she wished she had, and with her 80th birthday not too far into the future, she knew she wouldn't get many more chances. It was very close to Starfleet Headquarters, but she hadn't worked at Headquarters for years. There was a war going on, and Starfleet's Fleet Admiral spent very little time in the office bearing her name plate. She had bigger things to do than sit behind a desk, and as much as she wished that this visit was about seeing some old friends, it had an ulterior motive.

Despite the years since her last visit, Admiral Janeway still knew exactly which house she was looking for. She had been at the housewarming party thirty years before, she had celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, and promotions there, and it would always have a place in her heart. As she walked, she took in her surroundings, and thought about the course of her life and the circumstances that brought her to that moment, the decisions that she had made. Most significant were the seven years she spent as the captain on the _U.S.S. Voyager_. If it hadn't been for those years, she would not be making this particular visit. If it weren't for those years, there wouldn't _be_ anyone in this neighborhood for her to visit.

She saw a woman walking toward her and broke into a grin. She hadn't been noticed yet, because her old friend was occupied with something else—the two-year-old boy she was walking with. Just when Janeway was going to call out to her, she looked up, did a double take, and put on a very surprised expression.

"Admiral," she said with a smile. "This is a surprise."

"Not a bad one, I hope," Janeway replied, still smiling. "And I take it this little guy means that my goddaughter is around here somewhere?"

Captain B'Elanna Torres smiled again, this time sadly, as she bent to pick up her grandson. "No, unfortunately. Miral and Richard had a two week mission, and they dropped Owen off for some free babysitting. Tom and I have been taking turns taking days off to watch over him. We were just heading back home after an afternoon at the park."

The admiral smiled as she fell in step with her old friend. She held the rank of captain, but did not and would never command a ship. B'Elanna Torres, once her chief engineer on _Voyager_, had decided to stay in Starfleet after their return, "for a few years," and had been successfully rising in the ranks ever since, now designing warships and overseeing their construction and testing, splitting time between Starfleet Headquarters and Utopia Planitia on Mars. She had aged well over the years—she was in her sixties, but didn't look it, the result of her half-Klingon blood. Her dark hair was just beginning to gray, and her face showed only the lines that come from raising three kids--especially _those_ three kids. "If you don't mind me asking, Admiral, what brings you here today? Last I heard, you were raising hell on Deep Space 12."

Janeway smiled. "I would hardly say I was 'raising hell'. I was merely explaining to Captain Michelson the importance of keeping his station up to date and ready for any circumstance."

"That still didn't answer my question."

"An old admiral can't visit some of her former senior officers?" Janeway asked as a reply. "I had some business at Headquarters, and I figured since I was so close, I might as well stop by."

"Well, you're always welcome to visit. If anything, we wish you would do it more often."

"You know I wouldn't want to intrude. We were in each other's business every day for seven years; sometimes a little distance is healthy."

Torres was about to point out that this 'little distance' had been a complete lack of contact for over two years, but decided against it. There was no use starting an argument. "Have you heard anything new from anyone recently?" she asked instead as they entered the house and walked into the kitchen. "Do you want anything?" Torres offered, standing at the replicator.

"I'll have some tea, if that's okay." B'Elanna nodded, and got the tea for the admiral and coffee for herself.

The two officers sat in the kitchen with their drinks, getting each other up to date on the events of the past two years. The admiral told her former chief engineer some stories about the ships and stations she had been visiting, and Captain Torres told her former captain about some of her plans for new ships. She was about to launch into a detailed explanation about a new shield design she was working on when the admiral abruptly changed the subject.

"I haven't heard anything about the twins lately. How have they been?"

Torres was caught momentarily off-guard, but recovered quickly. She should have figured the conversation would swing back over to her children, as it often did. The twins, Joe and Abbey, were always a favorite topic. She didn't know if that was from amusement at their antics, or people being impressed by their achievements and accomplishments. Probably both. "They're both doing well. Joe is still working for Starfleet Intelligence, and still can't tell us what he's doing. He seems to love the work, though. I guess that's all a parent can really ask, for the kids to be happy with what their doing. He's been dropping hints that he might have a promotion coming up soon, so I guess whatever he's doing is impressing his commanding officers."

"As his parents' former commanding officer, that's hardly surprising," Janeway commented with a smile. Someone had joked once that there were three requirements to being a Paris: unbelievable talent, an almost-unhealthy dose of ambition, and stunning good looks. Joseph Paris was no exception to that rule, and knew it. He wasn't the twin Janeway had come to ask about, however. "What about Abbey?"

B'Elanna smiled slightly. "Less than two months away from graduation from Starfleet Medical Academy. She's actually going to be coming over for dinner tonight. Tom has his flight physical this afternoon, and they'll be heading over after that. In fact, they should be here in about an hour or so. You're more than welcome to stay for dinner and talk to her yourself. I'm sure she'd love to see you."

"You know, I think I will," Admiral Janeway said. "It'll be good to see them both again." She figured there was no need to tell B'Elanna exactly why she had come in the first place; she would hear it soon enough when Janeway got the opportunity to talk to Ensign Abigail Paris.


	3. Chapter 3

"Ensign, please present your patient," the Doctor said formally to the medical student standing before him.

Ensign Abbey Paris broke out into a grin. "The patient is a sixty-five-year-old human male who came in for his annual flight physical. Physical examination is normal, with the exception of some correctable vision loss, most likely related to age."

"Hey, I heard that!" Captain Tom Paris complained from the examining table.

"Mr. Paris, please be quiet as I work with my medical student," the Doctor scolded lightly. "Please continue, Ensign."

"With the vision correction, the patient is qualified to remain on flight status," Abbey finished.

"Very well. Would you like to perform the procedure, or should I do it?" the Doctor asked.

"No offense, Abbey, but I'd feel more comfortable with the Doctor taking the lead on this one," Captain Paris interjected.

The EMH frowned at the words. "It is a simple procedure, Mr. Paris, one that your daughter has performed successfully many times. She is more than qualified to do it herself."

"It's okay, Doc, I'm fine letting you do it. My father obviously doesn't have any confidence in my medical abilities," Ensign Paris said with a grin.

"It's not that, Abbey," Paris protested. "It's just, well, you're my daughter, not my doctor."

"I know. I understand. You'll put your pilots, the people actually fighting in combat, in my care, but you don't trust me enough to fix your vision to the point that will allow you to sit at a desk as you command them. It makes perfect sense."

Captain Paris groaned. "I'm not going to win this one, am I?"

"Mr. Paris, when was the last time you won an argument against any of the women in your family?" the Doctor asked as he finished the procedure. "You're as good as new, and free to go. Give B'Elanna my best." He turned to Ensign Paris. "Good job today, Ms. Paris. Your flight surgeon training has obviously paid off. I'll see you tomorrow, 0800 hours. We'll be going over the A-Z's of frontal lobe headaches."

"I can hardly wait," Abbey replied, barely able to keep the sarcasm from her voice. "Good night, Doctor."

---

Captain and Ensign Paris decided to enjoy the warm spring air and walk home from Starfleet Medical. It gave them a chance to talk alone, something they hadn't done in awhile. "I really didn't mean to be insulting about the vision correction," Tom said.

Abbey grinned. "Relax, Dad, I really wasn't offended. I know I'm still a medical student, and I know I'm still your daughter. If I ever have a kid who becomes a doctor, I don't think I'd want him or her to treat me, either. I was just joking with you."

"So we're okay?"

She grinned again. "When have we not been okay?"

He laughed. "What, you don't remember your whole teenage years?" After a few minutes of walking in silence, he said, "We haven't seen you in awhile."

She made a face. "I know. Things have been hectic, trying to finish up this last rotation with the Doctor—who is not the easiest preceptor, as I'm sure you remember. I'll also trying to get everything settled before moving away, and Miral has been checking out apartments for me at Utopia Planitia… it's been busy."

"You don't seem all that excited about going out to Mars Station after graduation," her father observed.

"Oh, I am," Abbey countered, trying to sound enthusiastic. "It's a great opportunity—I'll be able to serve as a flight surgeon while also doing research on enhancing the safety of the new ships. And I'll be close to Miral, and only a few hours away from you and Mom."

"But it's not what you wanted," Tom finished for her.

She sighed. "I always hoped I'd be on a ship. After all, I grew up with stories of life on _Voyager_ and what that was like. I don't want to be gone without any contact with Earth for seven years; I'm not saying that. But it would be so exciting and so new every day. I'm afraid I'm going to get bored being in the same place all the time."

"Your posting at Utopia Planitia isn't permanent, Abbey. You'll have plenty of time for serving aboard ships later in your career. Besides, I thought the station postings were the most coveted among recent Starfleet Medical Academy grads. You're the envy of most of your classmates."

"Most of my classmates weren't raised by a group of senior officers from _Voyager_," she pointed out. They walked in silence for a few more minutes, while Tom thought about what his daughter wanted, and how much he wanted to protect her from it, from everything. From the moment they learned that B'Elanna was pregnant again—with _twins_, no less, a physiological impossibility in full-blooded Klingons—all he wanted was for her to be safe and healthy. The pregnancy was a complicated one, and while Joe had been born with relatively few problems, nobody had been sure that Abbey would make it. It was four months in the neonatal unit at Starfleet Medical before they got to take her home for the first time. She had been--and still was--unusually small and fair for someone with Klingon blood, but she been able to not only keep up with other kids her age but often surpass them.

Then, only months before her graduation from Starfleet Academy, she was competing in her final gymnastics championship when Earth was attacked by the Nygleians, starting the war they were still fighting. She had been in a coma for two weeks, and was still severely injured after she woke up. Her gymnastics career was over; she even had to relearn how to walk, and the physical injuries she sustained weren't her only problems. As if losing the way she had distinguished herself since was a kid wasn't enough, she lost her fiancée, her cousin, her closest aunt and childhood confidant. Her parents and counselors tried to get her to take some time off before officially beginning her Starfleet career, but she decided to go on to the Medical Academy, insisting that the four more years of school was rest enough. Four years later, she considered herself to be as recovered as she'd ever be, and both Tom and B'Elanna had to agree that she was finally opening up and more closely resembling the person she had been before the attack. When the Doctor told them a few months ago that he was recommending her for a position at Utopia Planitia, they almost saw it as getting their youngest daughter back. Tom knew on an intellectual level that she wasn't his little girl anymore and that at twenty-five-years-old—three years older than B'Elanna was when they were stranded in the Delta quadrant—she was capable of taking care of herself, but he wasn't quite capable of letting go. He wanted her to be happy, but more than anything, he wanted her to be safe.

---

"Dinner was delicious, B'Elanna. Thanks," Admiral Janeway said as Tom began clearing the dishes.

"Oh, don't thank me. The replicator did all the work," Torres replied. "And it's no trouble to set an extra place for you whenever you want."

"I'll have to take you up on that in the future." She paused for a minute. "Unfortunately, I didn't just come tonight to get caught up." She noticed a look pass between Captains Paris and Torres and paused. "Was it something I said?"

Tom chuckled softly. "Well, honestly, we were waiting for the other shoe to fall. There haven't been many times that you've come to visit when you didn't need something or need to tell us something, and we didn't expect tonight to be any different."

She shook her head slowly with a smile on her face. "You know me too well. This time, though, it's not anything I need from either of you. It's for Abbey."

"Well, that's an interesting change," Abbey said with a smile. "I'm all ears, Admiral."

"As I'm sure you're all aware, we're always looking into new ways to fight and win battles. Admiral Jacobson, one of the military history professors at the Academy, suggested taking a page from the 20th century and using what he called 'aircraft carriers,'" Janeway began.

"Oh, I remember learning about that," Captain Paris interrupted. "They served as floating runways, so the fighter planes could take off and land at sea."

"That's right. With our new fleet of single-pilot fighter shuttles, we needed a way to deliver them to battle, and this is it. Harry is going to be commanding the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_, the first of what we're hoping will be several of these carriers."

"Harry's taking command?" Torres asked. She turned to her husband. "Has he said anything to you about this?"

"No," he replied, just as confused. "I thought, after the attack, that he wasn't going to be going back to space. And besides, he's never commanded a ship, just a station."

"He didn't want to take it," the admiral replied. "But I asked him to reconsider. I told him that I didn't want a ship commander on the _Kirk, _I wanted a station commander; it's so large it's more a mobile station than a ship. So I asked him to take command, but I wasn't going to order him to do it, it had to be his decision. He thought about it for awhile, and decided to do it. He just confirmed a few weeks ago."

"You haven't gotten to the part where it concerns me yet," Abbey pointed out.

"I was just about to. The _Kirk_ represents an experiment in military tactics on many levels, only one of which is the transportation of the single-pilot fighters. We are also in communication with the head of the Bajoran Militia regarding a partnership of sorts, with one of their ground infantry units stationed aboard the _Kirk_ for ground warfare, which Starfleet has been sadly unprepared and undertrained for. Also, in efforts to increase continuity, one of the stipulations of serving aboard the _Kirk_ is that both the senior officers—lieutenant commanders and above—as well as the support officers, such as physicians, must agree to serve aboard for a minimum of four years. One of the junior flight surgeons just found out that his wife is pregnant and asked to be relieved of his contract. There's now an opening for a flight surgeon, and if you're interested, Ensign, it's yours. I know it's not a prestigious as your current posting at Utopia Planitia, so I'll understand if you turn it down, but I thought you should know."

Abbey turned to her parents, who both looked surprised. She knew they wanted her to turn the offer down, to take the posting on Mars, but the idea of getting away from the Sol system could be everything she needed. "Four years?" she asked the admiral. "That doesn't seem so bad, since the minimum contract for doctors on vessels is three years." She turned back to her parents. "I know you want me to go to Utopia Planitia. I know you're still worried about me. But this is_ my_ life, and _my_ decision. I didn't decide to go into Starfleet to keep my feet on the ground. I've always wanted to go into space, you know that. And you _don't_ need to worry about me. After all, I'll be under Harry's command, and you know he'll do everything in his power to keep me safe." She turned back to the admiral. "I'll take it, Admiral. I don't even need to think about it. When do I leave?"


	4. Chapter 4

_Stardate 87557.6  
__San Francisco, Earth_

_Captain Harry Kim's personal log, Stardate 87557.6:_

_The last time this apartment was this empty, I was looking at it for the first time, moments after signing the contract. It has a nice view of the San Francisco Bay, but I couldn't care less about any of that. It was close to Starfleet Headquarters and had no painful memories of the house in Texas; that was all I needed in a place to live. Now, the boxes are packed again, everything that won't fit in my new quarters on the _Kirk_ in storage. Maybe someday I'll get it out again._

_Today is the day. In just a few minutes, some newly-minted Starfleet ensign is going to hit the announcer chime to tell me that it's time to leave for the ship. My first starship command; I don't know if it counts, though. Admiral Janeway referred to it as more of a station than a ship due to its size and function. A ship is a ship, though, and there was a point in my life that I would have considered this day to be the day I've always wanted. Ever since I opened the communication from Starfleet Academy telling me that I had been accepted to the Class of 2371, I imagined the day I would take my first ship's command, and I never stopped imagining it. I never thought it would be like this._

_Navi and I used to talk about this. We would stay awake planning our voyages through the galaxy, me in the captain's chair and her down in sickbay serving as the CMO. Christopher would come visit us on holiday and school vacations. We'd be that happy Starfleet family that everyone laughs about._

_I'm a little bit nervous—okay, I can practically hear Navi laughing at the understatement. I'm scared half to death. It's been so long since I've even been in space, since I've commanded anybody in a life-or-death situation, and I'm afraid that I won't remember how, that I won't be able to make the important decisions fast enough. The last time I tried—the last time I tried, I made the wrong one, and Navi and Christopher and three million other people died because of it. Part of me, maybe the largest part, wants to tell Admiral Janeway that she made the wrong decision asking me to take command. I could never do that, though; she was my first commander, and I think I'll always end up doing everything she asks. _

_*Beep beep_.*

Captain Harry Kim sighed at the door announcer. "Computer, end log," he ordered. "Enter."

To his surprise, the person standing there wasn't the ensign shuttle pilot he expected. "Tom," he greeted his old friend. "What are you doing here?"

Captain Tom Paris grinned, satisfied at his ability to still surprise Kim. "I'm here to take you to Mars Station," he replied matter-of-factly.

"I was told to expect an Ensign Gerath."

Paris' grin widened. "Well, instead of a bright green—literally, this time—newly-minted Starfleet ensign, you have the commanding officer of all piloting activity in the Sol system to take you to your first command." His grin faded slightly and he shrugged a shoulder. "I know I'm not a beautiful Betazoid/Vulcan/human hybrid physician, but I just thought having family around today would be good for you."

He nodded his understanding as he grabbed his one duffle bag. "Sure, Tom, but technically, are you still family?"

"Harry, Harry, Harry," Paris said in the same tone he used years before on _Voyager_. "When are you going to learn? You were family even before you married my sister-in-law. Half-sister-in-law? Guess it doesn't make any difference. Now let's get going. The girls are going to be meeting us there."

Their walk to the shuttle hangar took them through Starfleet Academy, where two captains in bright red shirts would always be enough to get the attention of the throngs of cadets making their ways around the Academy grounds. Knowing that there were too many young men and women snapping to attention to tell each of them to stand at ease, the captains merely nodded as they passed through.

Paris turned his head to see his old friend studying a group of young plebes—first year cadets still going through their orientation sessions—with a sad look on his face. "You okay, buddy?" he asked softly.

Kim nodded toward the group of plebes. "Christopher would have been a plebe this year," he replied.

Paris shook his head slightly. "You don't know that. You don't know if he would have even wanted to go into Starfleet. You can't keep imagining everything the way you think it would be, or you'd find yourself living a life of 'what ifs'."

"He wanted to go into Starfleet," Kim stubbornly insisted. "That was all he could talk about."

"He was _thirteen_, Harry. Every thirteen-year-old boy wants to go into Starfleet. Maybe he would have decided to focus on his music instead; we all know he was talented enough to make a career out of it. Or maybe he would have taken after his mother and joined early. After all, she was only sixteen when she started at the Academy." His voice softened. "My point, Harry, is that you can't go beating yourself up every time you see or hear or think of something that reminds you of Navi and Christopher. You'll drive yourself insane."

They walked in silence for the rest of the way to the hangar. As he tossed his duffle into the rear storage compartment, Kim said, "It's my fault, you know."

Paris snorted as he started up the engines. "My daughter says the same thing," he commented, being flip. "It's going to be great, you and Abbey on the ship together, both thinking that you're to blame for the Nygleian war. Maybe this feeling of guilt is contagious, and by the end of this mission, you'll have every single crewmember on the _Kirk_ convinced that it's all their fault."

Kim shook his head. "_I_ was the one in command, Tom. When that Nygleian ship crossed by DS4, I was the station commander who let them get by. If I had stopped them—"

"You followed protocol, Harry," Paris said forcefully. "You couldn't have known what they were going to do. Hell, by your logic, there are a thousand people who are to blame for the attacks. There were patrolling ships and security net monitors, and none of them picked up anything out of the ordinary. Maybe they should have stopped that Nygleian ship. Maybe the buildings on Earth should have built to withstand that kind of attack. Maybe I should have noticed an unknown ship entering the system and sent out ships to rendezvous. Maybe we all should have been able to see this coming. The fact is, Harry, nobody knew a damned thing was wrong until two minutes after the last plasma charge detonated. There's nothing you or anybody else could have done to prevent it."

Neither man said another word until they docked at Mars Station.


	5. Chapter 5

_Alpha quadrant  
__Inside Federation space  
_U.S.S. Enterprise-F  
_Deck 15, section 26_

Lt. Nenyaht stared up at the ceiling above his bed and sighed. He had been lying there for over two hours, and was no closer to sleep than he had been then. _It's those night shifts,_ he thought, irritated. Although exhausted after a long night shift in Engineering, he always had the hardest time falling asleep.

He realized, somewhat sadly, that that had been his last shift in Engineering aboard the _U.S.S. Enterprise_. They were currently heading for Mars Station, where the ship would be staying for repairs and some much-needed leave for the crew, and he would be transferring to the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_, where he would, again, be a junior officer in a massive Engineering department. Although he was excited about the change of pace, he felt he was ready for more.

He started his Starfleet career as a very junior Engineering officer aboard the _U.S.S. Zenith_, a small research vessel centered in the Beta quadrant. He was there for two years, then the war broke out, and he was transferred to the _Enterprise_ at the same time he was promoted to lieutenant junior grade. At the time, he was thrilled with the excitement; the _Enterprise_ was the top ship in the fleet, and just the kind of assignment he needed to someday make chief engineer.

Now, as a full lieutenant, instead of getting a chief engineer position on a small ship like the _Zenith_, he was being transferred from one large engineering department to another. Although he knew he should be proud that they thought enough of his engineering skills to move him to the fleet's newest and most advanced ship, he couldn't help but feel that it was a vote of no-confidence; they liked his engineering skills, but didn't think he'd make a good leader.

He continued to lie there and feel sorry for himself, but that got old quickly. "Computer, lights," he ordered. He was still tired, but he figured if he wasn't going to be getting any sleep anyway, he might as well do something constructive.

His quarters were not large by any means, but he still had a fair amount of stuff that needed to be packed up or recycled: outfits he'd replicated for holodeck programs, family pictures, things he'd picked up from various away missions and shore leaves. That was his father's influence; he was an anthropology professor at the Academy, and instilled in his son an almost compulsive need to collect objects that had significance to him.

He had been working a little over an hour when his door opened suddenly. He turned to the offending party, who looked about as surprised as he was. "You were on Gamma shift," Lt. Martin Coby said from the doorway. "I expected you to be asleep, not up gutting your quarters."

"I expected my door to remain closed until I commanded it open," Nenyaht replied dryly. "How did you get in here?"

His former Academy roommate grinned broadly. "Security override," he replied, somewhat smugly.

"I knew I should have installed extra anti-Coby security measures," Nenyaht muttered to himself.

"Well, it's too late for that, seeing as you're leaving in a few hours," the tall, blond haired security guard replied with a grin. "It's gonna be strange, not being on the same ship as you anymore."

"I know. You're going to have find somewhat else to torment for awhile."

"Which won't be nearly as much fun." He looked around the empty quarters. "This place looks strange without your knick-knacks everywhere."

"Cultural artifacts," Nenyaht corrected, finally smiling. "As my father would say." As first year cadets, the "cultural artifacts" were a source of constant debate among the roommates; Coby said they got in the way, and Nenyaht would launch into an extensive oration about how possessions have always been viewed as extensions of the owners, as important in shaping the individual as tools were in shaping the society. They argued about it for a few weeks, and then took it to the chair of the Anthropology department, who sided with Nenyaht. Coby didn't find out until a few months later that the chair of the Anthropology department was actually Nenyaht's father.

Coby picked up one of the few items left out, a framed picture of Nenyaht and his parents from when he was young. "You look like your father, you get your compulsive need to collect random junk from him--what did you get from your mother?"

"My tolerance of endless questions and charming sense of humor," Nenyaht replied dryly, which caused Coby to grin; he had met Nenyaht's mother, and had found her dry, sarcastic humor difficult to follow and slightly condensing.

The two were silent as Nenyaht continued to pack. "So, you going to get me the names of some of the hot women you're going to meet on the _Kirk_?" Coby finally asked.

"What makes you think I'd tell you about them? Maybe I'm going to keep them to myself."

"No offense, but that's not your style," Coby countered. "You're a romantic—which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it means you're not going to be picking up random girls. You're the type to get to know them, be best friends with them for about twenty years, lose the nerve to ask them out, and watch them date other people. That's how you work. Sounds like no fun, if you ask me."

"That isn't how it goes."

"Oh, really? We've been on the _Enterprise_ for four years. How many dates have you taken to the holodeck? Three?" It was actually two, but Nenyaht wasn't going to correct him. "Your problem is that you're still in love with the girl you grew up with—what was her name, London?"

"Paris," Nenyaht corrected, then flushed—Coby had known exactly who he was talking about, she spent a good deal of time hanging out in their room third year. "And I'm not in love with her. She's been my friend since I was seven. She took piano lessons from my mother for about fifteen years. I played parrises squares with her brother. She's like my little sister." He paused to open a drawer, sifting though its contents before determining that there was nothing he needed to save. "Besides, I haven't even seen her since we left the Academy."

"But you still know what she's up to, don't you?"

"Yeah, her parents are good friends with mine and they keep us up to date. Last I heard, she accepted a position in the medical department at Utopia Planitia."

"Where we will be in less than a day. Perfect time to look her up." Nenyaht rolled his eyes, but had nothing to say in reply. It wouldn't be a bad time to look her up; he just didn't know what he would say. After their last fight, he didn't know if there was anything _to_ say.


	6. Chapter 6

_Alpha quadrant, sector 001  
__Mars Station_

Dr. Abbey Paris folded the last of her shirts and set it in her duffle. She didn't have many outfits in there; she figured she could replicate whatever she would need as she went. The few she had were the ones she had been wearing for the past few days.

"Got everything?" a voice asked from the doorway of the small guestroom she had been occupying for four days, since she arrived at Mars Station. She snapped her head up to see her sister standing there.

"Yeah, I think so," she said as closed the bag. "Anything I forgot, you can just send back to Mom and Dad. I'm sure they won't mind holding it for awhile."

Miral waved her hand dismissively. "If it's small enough for you to have forgotten, I wouldn't mind holding it, either."

Abbey studied her older sister for a minute, feeling the familiar mix of jealousy and sadness. Miral was, and always would be, the big sister who set the bar too high for anyone else to reach. Growing up, Abbey always thought of Miral as everything she was not. She was tall and poised, with their mother's thick dark hair, dark eyes, and bronzed skin. She was smart enough to have been accepted to the Academy at seventeen, although she chose to defer a year in order to enter at the same time as Richard, her future husband. She was a very talented pilot; she had been invited to try out for Nova Squadron her freshman year at the Academy, and became the first fourth classman ever to be accepted. Everyone always commented that she was completely fearless, both at the helm and fighting hand-to-hand. She had their father's flying skills and sense of humor; their mother's strength, looks, determination, and, unfortunately, her temper as well. Abbey, on the other hand, was small to the point of near-waifishness—a trait that had been handy in her days as a gymnast, but was now just a source of frustration. She was much more fair, her hair a shade of blond lighter than their father's, with his blue eyes and ruddy skin, none of which went nicely with the cranial ridges she got from their mother. She was smart and talented enough to get into the Academy, but unlike Miral, was nearly useless at the helm of a starship or shuttle, and unlike Joe, not assertive enough to make Red Squad, the elite group dedicated to advanced fieldwork training. While she was competitive in some aspects of her life, like her gymnastics growing up, more often than not, she couldn't care less about being on top. She lacked the kind of drive their mother had, making her more like their father in that way; merely content to take life's battles as they arise, and not go out looking for new ones. She wasn't completely hard on herself—she knew she was a talented piano player, and once among the best gymnasts Starfleet had. But the piano was a hobby, and the gymnastics was gone. She knew she had more patience than either of her parents or either of her siblings, and often wondered growing up where that, like her musical abilities, came from. She was the closest thing to a misfit that the Paris family had.

She glanced up at the antique wall clock—circa 1950—their father had replicated Miral as a housewarming gift, and quickly calculated the time. It was half after one o'clock—1330 hours. Their mother was scheduled to arrive any minute; their father had arrived the afternoon before with Harry Kim, and was staying in his commuter quarters on the other side of the residential area of the Station.

"Thanks again for letting me stay here the past few days," she said to her sister.

To her surprise, Miral smiled. "Abbey, it was my pleasure. I hadn't seen you in awhile, and, well, I had gotten excited about us both being here at Utopia Planitia together. I had all sorts of things planned that we could do together."

"Like sleepovers and manicures, giggling about deeply buried secrets?" Abbey asked with a grin. They both laughed at the thought—they were not girly girls, and none of those activities ever really appealed to either of them. "Sorry I had to ruin your plans by taking this assignment."

"As long as you're happy, Abbey, that's all that matters," Miral said, surprising her sister yet again. "Enjoy it while you can. Before you know it, you're going to be married and stuck at some station with the kids while your husband gets all the fun assignments." She said it with a smile, but Abbey knew that she meant every word. Although she was a good test pilot and excellent flight instructor, it wasn't nearly enough excitement for Miral. Abbey suspected that she resented Richard's freedom, but she wasn't about to bring that up. Some other time, perhaps.

*Shuttle dock to Commander Paris,* Miral's combadge chirped.

"Must be Mom," Miral said before responding: "Paris here."

*The shuttlecraft _Antarian Rally_ is on approach.*

"Thank you, we'll be there shortly. Paris out." Both Parises rolled their eyes when they heard which shuttle was coming. The _Antarian Rally_ was the Paris family's private shuttle, designed and built entirely by them and named after the race their parents were competing in when their father proposed. "Well, we should get going," Miral said to her younger sister. They headed out of the apartment, toward the transport to take them to the business side of the base. _This is it,_ thought Abbey. _There's no turning back now._

---

To their surprise, there was not one person in the _Antarian Rally_, but two. "Joey!" Abbey exclaimed when her twin brother stepped out of the shuttle. "What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't let my twin sister go off on her first assignment without saying goodbye," he replied with a grin. "Plus I had just finished my top-secret mission and was in the neighborhood." He gave his smaller sister a large hug, then pulled back and held her at arm length to look at her. "Look at you, all grown up with your full lieutenant pips," he said with a teasing grin.

Her eyes flashed devilishly for a second. "I know. After four years as an ensign, I outrank you."

"Only for another week," he said, his grin widening.

Abbey's eyes widened as that registered. "You're getting the promotion? Congratulations!" She gave her brother another hug. Unlike the medical corps, which had predictable promotions every six years, assuming one stayed out of big trouble, promotions in Intelligence weren't always easy to come by.

"He just told us last night, when he got in," B'Elanna said as she joined them. "Whatever it is he was just doing, it must have made an impression on his commanding officers."

"Either that or he's blackmailing them about something," Miral said dryly. Joe only grinned back at his older sister.

Since Abbey still had another two hours until she was allowed on the _Kirk_, they met up with Tom, and the Paris family decided to find a place for a late lunch. As they ate, Abbey studied her twin brother. He was younger than her by almost an hour, but had always been bigger, and always somewhat protective of his small sister. It had been over a year since the two had seen each other in person, and depending on how deep he was into an assignment, his letters came somewhat sporadically, and often contained little more than responses to her stories, so Abbey had little idea what had been going on in his life. What she did know was that the time in Intelligence had changed him. He still looked the same: tall and athletic, with thick, dark hair and dark eyes, but there was something different now. He looked more serious, and even while talking in the restaurant, Abbey noticed his eyes flickering toward the door, windows, and other patrons, always ready for whatever may occur. He used to be much more relaxed and playful, with a definite devilish streak. As cadets, the Paris twins' practical jokes were something to be feared by students and professors alike; now, Abbey doubted he'd be interested in reprogramming the hand-to-hand combat simulation with Girl Scouts instead of Klingons, or replacing all the band instruments with replicas that sounded like Nosacarian geese. On the one hand, she was glad it appeared that her brother was growing up; on the other, she was sad to think that her favorite childhood playmate wouldn't be interested in playing anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

_Alpha quadrant  
__B'hava'el System  
__Tempasa Militia Base, Bajor  
__Headquarters of the 3__rd__ Infantry Division, 7__th__ Battalion_

Captain Bhan Larina stood outside the office of her battalion commander, Lt. Colonel Jena Kareen, and took a deep breath. In her three years as a company commander, she had never been summoned to Colonel Jena's office like this before.

She was facing the door, staring at the insignia of the Bajoran militia without seeing it, wondering what this could be about. Finally, she decided that it was better to find out than speculate, and pressed the console to indicate that she was at the door. She heard the gruff, "Enter," from the other side, and was still staring at the insignia as the doors slid open.

"Captain Bhan. Have a seat," Colonel Jena said in his usual manner, which was neither inviting nor intimidating, just there. He appeared to be finishing a report, and left her sitting there in silence as he did so. _Scare tactics_, Captain Bhan told herself. _That's all he's doing, letting you know he's more important than you_. So she waited patiently for him to finish and tell her why she was sitting there.

After a few minutes, he turned to her. "So, how have you been, Captain?" he asked, almost conversationally.

"I've been well, Colonel. Thank you," she replied formally.

"I've been studying reports from your company, and while I can see some areas for improvement, I'm overall pleased with the performance," he said, getting to the point.

"Thank you, sir," Bhan replied, not sure where this was leading.

"You have engaged the enemy on the ground three times in the past six months, is that correct?" he asked.

"Four, sir," Bhan replied. "Twice on Tareillias IV, and one time each on Miasoc II and Yegna VIII."

"I see," he muttered as he made a note on his PADD. "And you reached your objective all four times?"

"Yes, sir." He nodded his understanding before beginning.

"This war has put Bajor in a slightly awkward position," he started. "Technically, we're not part of the Federation, but we do have a military alliance with them, which we have been honoring. Recently, Starfleet has begun making changes in their fighting strategy. This war is different than any other Starfleet has been involved in, due to the high number of ground invasions. They aren't very well trained in ground combat, but we are. They've asked us to extend our alliance in that regard."

"If they need training for ground combat, why are you talking to me?" Bhan asked. "Kejal Company is the most successful in the Infantry. We're needed on the front lines. I don't have time to train a group of raw Starfleet recruits."

"They don't want training," Jena replied flatly. "They've asked for units to fight with them. They made the request at the top, and it got sent down to me. Our battalion has had more encounters with the enemy than any other in the entire Militia, and of the companies I command, yours has the best record. As a result, I am sending you to Starfleet."

Bhan wasn't exactly following the conversation. "Sending us to Starfleet? How does this work, sir?" she asked.

Jena sighed, but not from impatience, and it became apparent that he wasn't quite sure, either. "Your company will not be detached from the battalion, but you will enjoy more autonomy. You will be stationed aboard the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_, and will be dispatched for ground combat when necessary."

"So we are still part of the Bajoran Militia, and still part of 7th Battalion?" Bhan asked, "But we'll take our orders from a Starfleet captain?"

"Yes," Jena said bluntly. He held up a hand to stop further questions. "I know it's not perfect, Captain, but it's the best solution we could come up with. The Starfleet captain will be on site and will have a better idea of the situation than I; it would make no sense for your orders to come through me. As I said, you will enjoy a certain amount of autonomy. This includes the right to refuse engaging the enemy when the objective is not clear or not attainable. I urge you, however, to use this right carefully. You don't want the reputation as one who avoids combat."

"I understand, sir," Bhan replied. That wouldn't be a problem—everyone in the Militia knew that the commanding officer of Kejal Company was more likely to find combat than avoid it. "When do we leave?"

"The _Kirk_ is scheduled to arrive at Bajor in three weeks. You have that time to prepare your troops. As I understand it, quarters for the officers and berths for the soldiers have already been set aside, and are separate than those used by the Starfleet crew. You will still be allowed to train your soldiers as you see fit, and don't have to go by any Starfleet schedule." He paused here, seeming to collect his thoughts. "I know this is different, Captain, and we're still working the kinks out, but I hope for the sake of our future with the Federation, we can figure out how to make it work."

"As do I, sir," Bhan replied.

He nodded his understanding. "That's all, Captain. I've arranged for all of the intelligence we have on this agreement to be delivered to your office. Good luck." And with another nod, she was dismissed.


	8. Chapter 8

_Mars Station  
__Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

"Joe, what are you doing to your sister's replicator?" Captain Tom Paris asked suddenly. The women stopped their conversation and turned to see what was going on. Sure enough, Joe was standing by the replicator, appearing to be programming something into it.

"I'm just making sure it's equipped with Abbey's favorite recipes," he replied indignantly. "I don't want my sister to be wandering through space without banana pancakes handy."

Abbey made a face; banana pancakes were his favorite, she couldn't stand them. "What's this?" she asked, opening the box her father brought with him.

"Just some things I thought would make your quarters feel more like home," Tom replied. She pulled out a movable hula-dancing doll and arched an eyebrow quizzically.

"Or stuff you can recycle as soon as your father leaves," B'Elanna added.

Abbey pulled out the next item and felt her throat constrict. "Thanks, Dad," she managed. It was a framed photograph from the _Voyager_ reunion seven years before, a picture which represented happier times. With the exception of Professors Tuvok and Seven of Nine, everyone was smiling, unaware that in three years time, their lives would change forever and for the worse. They were all in formal dress, uniforms or civilian, but the attitude was anything but reserved. Admiral Janeway was in the center, surrounded by her former senior staff and their families. Harry Kim, still wearing the rank of commander, had one arm around Navi and the other hand on Christopher's shoulder, eleven years old and trying to make himself look taller. Professors Chakotay and Seven of Nine were both there, but not standing near each other, Seven looking slightly uncomfortable. Captains Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres stood together, his arm around her shoulder; next to them were Lieutenants Miral Paris and Richard Yosting, on leave from the _Yorktown_, in a time before Owen was born. And near the center of the group, acting as unceremonious as ever, Cadets Joe Paris, Abbey Paris, and Nenyaht were standing—rather, Joe and Nenyaht were standing, and holding up Abbey between them to make her look taller. She remembered laughing so hard as they held her up that as soon as the holoimage was taken, they couldn't take it anymore and ended up dropping her.

"We had just finished our first year," Abbey said, more to herself than anyone in the room. "We were so young…"

"And thought we knew everything," Joe finished with a grin. "Which, of course, we did. And let everyone know it."

She grinned back in reply and placed the picture where she would be able to see it from anywhere in the room. She figured it would be a good reminder of more normal times.

"You know, Harry hasn't seen you guys yet," Captain Paris said suddenly. "Computer, locate Captain Harry Kim."

Captain Kim is in the main sickbay, the computer replied.

Tom grinned devilishly. "Abbey, I think it's time for your physical. And I think we need to walk you there."

---

Main sickbay, as Abbey knew from glancing at the schematics, was many times larger than the auxiliary flight sickbay, where she would be working. There were seventy beds, staffed by thirty physicians and even more nurses and medics. At the moment, there were about fifteen physicians giving physicals, and about thirty of the beds were occupied.

"Name and department?" one of the medics asked as Abbey entered the sickbay.

"That's Dr. Abigail Paris, flight surgeon," a voice responded from one of the beds. Abbey broke into a grin when she recognized the form lying there.

"Hi, Harry," she responded, then flushed. "I mean, Captain Kim," she corrected. _This is going to get awkward very quickly_, she thought. Ever since she was five, Harry was just Harry. Before that, he was Uncle Harry.

"So, Harry," Captain Torres said in an accusatory tone. "Why did we have to hear from Admiral Janeway first that you were taking command? I thought we were family."

"Your husband already gave me the lecture," Kim replied with a roll of his eyes. "The whole bit about it not being married your sister that made us family." It wasn't until three years after the _Voyager_ crew returned to Earth that B'Elanna Torres even met her half-sister, and after an initial rocky start, the two got along very well, despite the eleven-year age difference and opposite personalities; B'Elanna was quick to anger, due to her half-Klingon temper, whereas Navi was more constrained and calculating, thanks to the influence from her half-Vulcan, half-Betazoid mother. Although B'Elanna was upset when she found out that then-Lieutenant Harry Kim started dating Navi the first time he was back on Earth, he and Tom managed to convince B'Elanna to get to know her younger half-sister and give her a chance. She eventually conceded, going so far as to name Harry and Navi godparents of the twins when they were born three years later.

They decided that as soon as both Abbey and Harry finished their physicals, Harry would give them the official tour of the ship. He showed them the key areas of the ship: the bridge, his ready room, engineering, the officer dining halls, the flight sickbay, and finished with what he knew Tom, B'Elanna, and Miral would all want to see: the fighter bays. The single-pilot fighters were arranged in rows, as far as the eyes could see. They stood there in silence as they watched the maintenance crews work on the small vessels. "It's like a candy store," Miral finally said, in a tone that told them she was barely able to contain herself.

Harry slapped Tom on the back. "Who would have known that your creation would come to this?" he asked rhetorically.

"Our design was nothing like these," Tom replied in wonder. The first single-pilot fighter was designed by Tom and B'Elanna years before, before the war even broke out, and had been improved upon since.

"Once our full crew is aboard, we'll have two thousand pilots for twelve hundred fighters, and fifteen hundred engineers and maintenance personnel whose sole jobs will be to keep them running," Harry announced. "Pretty impressive, if you ask me."

"What's your full crew compliment?" B'Elanna asked.

"Counting pilots and the Bajoran ground unit, we'll have fifty-five hundred, with room for more," Harry replied.

"And they put you in charge of all it," Tom stated.

"Yeah," Harry replied, looking out at the rows of fighters. "Think I can handle it?"

---

On their walk back to Abbey's quarters, the Paris family ran into two people they would not have expected to see under such circumstances, and certainly not together.

"Moving in?" Tom jokingly asked Professor Chakotay, who was carrying a box and coming down the corridor toward them.

"Yeah, Harry told me they needed an old Anthropology professor, and I volunteered for the job. Someone has to keep tabs on him, after all."

"Captain Kim is more than capable of commanding this vessel without your help," Seven of Nine retorted. She turned to Captain Paris. "Nenyaht has been reassigned to the _Kirk_. The _Enterprise_ is coming in tonight, and we came to move some items into his quarters before he arrived."

"And what about you? Moving Joe in?" Chakotay asked.

Joe scoffed. "Me? Assigned to a ship? That wouldn't last long. We're actually sending Abbey off."

Chakotay looked surprised when he turned to Abbey; this was clearly the first he had heard of this. "I thought you had accepted a posting at Utopia Planitia."

"I did," she replied. "But this came up, and I really couldn't turn it down. I had no idea Nenyaht would be here, too," she added. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about that; Nenyaht had been one of her closest friends when they were kids, but to say that they had grown apart since he graduated from the Academy six years before would have been an understatement. She wasn't sure how it would feel to see him again. "Where are his quarters?" she asked.

"Right here," Chakotay said, gesturing toward the door on his left.

"Look at that, Abbey—you're right across the corridor," Miral pointed out. Sure enough, the door directly across from Abbey's quarters was the one Chakotay had just pointed out, clearly labeled with "Lt. Nenyaht, Engineering". Her own door was similarly marked, "Lt. Abigail Paris, MD, Flight Surgeon".

"Do you think we should warn Security that those two are going to be in such close proximity? There's no telling what stunts they could pull," B'Elanna joked.

"You're telling me. When I had Abbey and Joe in class their second year, Nenyaht helped them break into my lab and change all of the descriptions of the artifacts I was showing in class the next day to read that they were all involved in the sexual practices of the civilizations they came from. I didn't catch the changes until class was underway. I'm sure there were many cadets in that class trying to imagine how some of those artifacts could be construed as sexual."

Joe pretended to look appalled. "Professor, there is absolutely no evidence that Abbey, Nenyaht, or myself was involved in that incident. If there had been, I'm sure the Academy would have taken disciplinary action."

Everyone rolled their eyes. There was never any evidence that those three cadets were involved in any of the many pranks that occurred during their years there, but it was a widely known fact that they were responsible for the majority of them. Seeing as no one ever got hurt, most of the professors let it slide without much more than a grumble, and among the other students, it was almost an honor to be "Parised", as it became known.

"I'm sure both Nenyaht and Dr. Paris will show more constraint now than they had as cadets," Seven remarked dryly. "Or one should hope."

They shared a chuckle, and the adults expressed a desire to meet up for dinner at some point when they all had the time. With nothing else to say, they split off into the separate quarters and went back to their business.


	9. Chapter 9

_Mars Station  
__Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards_

It was almost 0300 when the _Enterprise_ arrived at Mars Station. His sleep cycle still erratic from the off shifts he had been working lately, the sound of the ship being docked was enough to rouse Lt. Nenyaht. Realizing that it was not a threatening sound, he quickly rolled over and went back to sleep. He woke again at 0500, an hour before he usually got out of bed. He tried unsuccessfully for a few moments to fall back asleep, then gave up. _Might as well get an early start on the day_, he thought. Although he had permission to board the _Kirk_ whenever he wanted prior to launch, his first duty shift wasn't until the Engineering officer's meeting at 1700, so he had elected to spend one last night in his old quarters. Unfortunately, they were no longer recognizable as the place where he had been living the past few years. Everything he couldn't part with was packed into two boxes, and everything else had been recycled.

After rolling out of bed, he padded over to the replicator. "Black coffee, hot," he muttered into the console. Ever since he was a teenager, he needed the jolt of caffeine to get himself going in the morning. His father constantly frowned and told him he drank too much of the stuff, but his godmother always came to his defense. She understood the power of black coffee; as she like to say, she beat the Borg with it.

He followed the coffee with a small breakfast of oatmeal, his years of experience as an athlete telling him that that would be the kind of breakfast he would need for the kilometers of running he had planned for that morning. He had never been a distance runner growing up, instead opting for the sprints that helped him train for parrises squares, but one of Coby's fellow security officers—a tall, fit, blond female security officer—convinced him to give the longer distances a chance and go running with her. To his surprise, he actually found that he enjoyed it for more than the company. He had been planning on training for the Starfleet marathon, but he wasn't sure if that was going to happen this year; he didn't know where the _Kirk_ would be the day of the run.

He was about to leave the ship to go running on the planet when he remembered how early it was—the sun wouldn't be up yet, which was usually a good indication of it being too early to go running. _And if I wait_, he thought to himself_, I could look Abbey up before heading back to the ship_. Deciding that that was a good idea, he put his plans to go running on hold for a bit and grabbed a nearby PADD, filled with data and equations for the experiments he planned on running on the _Kirk_'s new deflector systems. Before he knew it, a few hours had gone by, with him hardly moving a muscle. When he realized the time, he tossed the PADD on top of his boxes of possessions and grabbed his shoes. It was time to go running.

---

Probably the best idea the civil engineers at Mars Station had ever had was to place sonic showers and clothing replicators at the end of the long running trails that circled the main compound. After his two hour run, Nenyaht was dripping sweat, in no condition to be meeting up with anyone. After a quick sonic shower and crisp new gold uniform, however, he was ready to see if his friendship with Abbey had been able to survive the six years they had gone without saying much to each other. He contemplated replicating some flowers, but decided that might be a bit much.

With a sigh and self-conscious uniform adjustment, he headed over to the nearest computer terminal. "Computer," he stated with authority. "Locate Dr. Abigail Paris."

*Dr. Paris is not at Mars Station,* the computer replied.

He frowned. Maybe she hadn't started work yet; the Medical Academy graduation was only a few weeks ago. "Computer, locate the residency of Dr. Abigail Paris."

*There are no quarters registered to Dr. Paris,* the computer replied.

His frown deepened. Even if she hadn't started work as a physician yet, she should still have quarters on the station. "Show all residencies belonging to anyone with the name of Paris," he commanded.

The screen changed to a map of Mars Station with two buildings highlighted. *There are two quarters registered under the name of Paris,* the computer replied. *Captain Thomas Paris and Captain B'Elanna Torres' quarters are in the commuter complex, section three, room fifteen-a. The residence of the family of Lt. Commander Richard Yosting and Lt. Commander Miral Paris is located in section seven alpha of the residential area.*

Nenyaht groaned. He knew Tom and B'Elanna had a small apartment for nights either worked too late to head back to Earth, and Richard and Miral had been stationed at Utopia Planitia since before Owen was born. He just couldn't figure out why Abbey didn't have quarters, unless her assignment had been changed since last he heard.

"Computer, where is Dr. Abigail Paris assigned?"

*That information is unavailable from this terminal,* the computer replied.

"Some help you are," Nenyaht muttered.

*Please restate query,* the computer requested. Nenyaht just shook his head and started walking back toward the transporter site. So much for that idea.

---

A few hours later, after one last breakfast with Coby on the _Enterprise_, Nenyaht was on board the _Kirk_, carrying his two boxes of stuff from the transporter room to his new quarters. Concentrating on not dropping any of his belongings, he almost missed the site of a familiar face walking down the corridor toward him.

"Miral?" he asked the tall lieutenant commander deep in thought reading a PADD.

Her head snapped up, and her surprised expression quickly changed into a grin. "Nenyaht, it's good to see you. I would give you a hug, but it looks like you have your hands full."

"That's okay," he replied with a smile. "So what are you doing on board the _Kirk_? Checking out the fleet of flyers?"

"Actually, I saw them yesterday. We were just having breakfast with Harry."

"Ah. That makes sense. Hey, I have a question for you."

"Sure," she replied.

"I was going to see if Abbey wanted to go out for coffee or something before the _Kirk_ left, but the computer said she wasn't on the Station."

"Oh, yeah, she's already on board. We dropped her off yesterday after dinner," Miral replied. "I offered to let her stay with me another night, but I think she's had enough of a screaming two-year-old to last her awhile."

"Wait," Nenyaht said, the conversation not registering. "She's on board the _Kirk_?"

"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. She was offered a position as a flight surgeon on the _Kirk_, so she transferred away from Utopia Planitia. In fact, your quarters are right across the corridor from hers. Mom made some comment about alerting security as to the dangers of having you two so close, which I don't think Seven found very funny."

Nenyaht was so surprised at the news that Abbey would be aboard the same ship as him that it didn't fully register at first; all he could wrap his brain around was the last thing Miral had said. "You mean Mom's around?" he asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the reluctance out of his voice.

Paris grinned; she knew the feeling. "Actually, both of your parents are at the Station. I think they wanted to have lunch with you before you left."

This time he did groan audibly. "Both of them? Together? That was never a good idea, not even back when they were still married."

She chuckled in sympathy. "Well, try to be nice. They must both really miss you if they're willing to deal with each other for this long to see you."

"Yeah, I guess," he replied thoughtfully. "Well, I need to get this stuff into my quarters. Are you going to be around for awhile? The launch isn't until 1500. We can catch up this afternoon after I'm done dealing with my parents."

She grimaced slightly. "I'd love to, but I have a class to teach. It was good running into you, though. Stay out of trouble, keep an eye on Harry, and take care of yourself."

He grinned in reply as he answered her commands sequentially. "No guarantees, I don't think the captain needs supervision, and you too. Say hi to Richard and Owen for me."

She smiled and waved goodbye, turning back to her PADD as she continued down the corridor.

As Nenyaht headed toward his quarters, he replayed the conversation in his head. Once Miral's words had set in, that Abbey would be living literally only meters away from his door, he stopped in his tracks, almost causing an ensign to run into him. "This is going to be interesting," he muttered to himself before resuming walking. The ensign, with a perplexed look on his face, shook his head slightly as if to clear it before continuing.

---

Dr. Abbey Paris mentally counted quarters as she made her way down the corridor from the turbolift, still afraid she was going to get lost on the giant new ship. Not for the first time, she found herself wishing that her parents had taken at least a few ship's postings in the course of her life. Maybe if they had, she would have a better handle on getting around on one. She had done her summer cruise while at the Academy and had two rotations in space in her fourth year of medical school, but still had the feeling that she was constantly walking in circles, with deck after deck of identical corridors, doors, and even personnel. _Fifty-five hundred crewmembers on seventy-three decks—better get used to it fast_, she thought with a sigh.

Arriving at the door, she confidently entered her code and moved to step forward, only to hear the annoying beeping sound of an incorrect code. Clenching her teeth together tightly, she re-entered the code, with the same result.

"Abbey." The voice, familiar in its quiet strength, made the hairs on the back of her head stand up in nervous anticipation. She quickly spun to face him, her eyes widening imperceptibly in surprise. Although she had known at an intellectual level that with their quarters being across the corridor from each other they would undoubtedly cross paths, she hadn't been ready for it. He looked good—better than good, in fact, but he always had to her—slightly more filled out than he had been as a twenty-one-year-old cadet, looking even more like his father, right down to the deep dimples on his cheeks. His arms were filled with boxes, a standard-issue duffle slung across his shoulders, undoubtedly moving in.

"Nate," she finally replied, finding her voice. She had called him 'Nate' since they were kids and she was unable to correctly pronounce his name, and in her surprise, had reverted to that old habit.

He stood there uncomfortably for a moment, the combination of the boxes and the awkwardness of the situation. A thousand possible things to say ran through his mind, from _I've missed you_ to _You look well_ to starting off with the _I'm sorry_ that had been six years in the making. Instead, he found himself saying, "I, um, I just saw your sister."

A flash of disappointment crossed over her blue eyes, gone so fast he convinced himself he imagined it. "Oh, yeah," she said quickly. "We were having breakfast with Harry. She had to get back to the Station to prepare for the class she's teaching in the afternoon."

"Yeah, she said something about that," he replied awkwardly. They both continued to stand there, silently watching each other.

"I still have some unpacking to do and reading that needs to get done before my shift," she finally said, "but do you want to meet for lunch? We can check out the Officer's Mess."

He grimaced. "I can't. Miral just told me that my parents are at the Station and want to have lunch."

"Right," she said with a quick nod.

"Believe me, I'd rather have lunch with you than the two of them together," he added hastily, flashing her a very quick grin. "But what about later? We can meet for coffee in the afternoon, maybe watch the launch from the Mess or the bar."

She shook her head. "I have a meeting regarding my residency requirements at 1400. It'll probably last a few hours, and then I have a shift scheduled to help with flight physicals." She sighed. "Dinner? I might have a brief break around 1700 or 1800."

He laughed bitterly, giving his head a quick shake. "Engineering meeting at 1700. Rain check?"

She laughed slightly at the irony—it was a repeat of their old patterns, both always so busy with their different activities that it was amazing they ever found any time to hang out growing up. She had read the phrase 'rain check' in a mystery novel written a few centuries before and looked it up, finding it appropriate for their constant attempts at scheduling time for each other. They had used it often. _Thirty seconds after we meet again, and it's just like always_, she thought. "Sure. Rain check." She gave him a half-smile and turned again to enter her code, getting the same error warning as before. Feeling her face flush in embarrassment, she gave a low Klingon curse.

"Abs?" Nenyaht asked, confused. "Did you need something from my quarters?"

She looked up in surprise. "Your…" her voice trailed off as she glanced at the nameplate, seeing his name instead of hers. Her blush darkened as she again swore under her breath.

"It takes awhile to get used to ship life," he said with a wide, teasing grin as she crossed the corridor to her own quarters. "If you want, I can give you my codes, you can stop on by anytime."

She was momentarily taken aback by the offer, before she remembered how easily they came and went in each other's houses and dorm rooms years before. Slowly, an uneven grin emerged on her face. "Your codes, Nate?" she scoffed, a teasing tone in her voice. "I can figure those out in my sleep."

Those dimples were even more pronounced with his wide answering grin. "You're on, Paris." She shot him another quirky grin before ducking into her own quarters across the corridor.


	10. Chapter 10

Lt. Nenyaht stopped just inside the sliding doors of Main Engineering, getting a feel for his surroundings. The department was huge, easily two or three times the size of its counterpart on the _Enterprise_, which was several times larger than the engineering department on the _Zenith_. _Moving up and moving out_, he thought with a small smirk as he made his way slowly along the workstations, glancing at the various consoles he passed. Sooner or later, they were going to run out of larger ships to transfer him to and were going to have to make him a chief engineer somewhere. At this rate, it was looking like later. He had never considered himself to be particularly ambitious, instead preferring to do the best job he could with whatever job and position he had been given, but the further he got into his Starfleet career, the more he found himself working to distinguish himself, hoping to get noticed enough to get that next accolade, promotion, and position.

Knowing that no amount of bitter feelings about not being a chief engineer were going to change his current situation, he focused instead on his surroundings and what he remembered about them from his introductory memos. There were over a thousand engineers assigned to the engineering department, about two hundred of which were officers and would be at this meeting. He knew that the chief engineer was a commander with quite a few years in grade, but he had no idea what the rank breakdown was the remaining officers. For all he knew, as a full lieutenant with one year in grade, he could have been one of the most senior officers—or one of the most junior.

His eyes lit up when he found what appeared to be the auxiliary controls for the deflector, his personal specialty. His mother was known throughout the Federation and its allies—and mostly likely, a number of its enemies as well—for being the foremost expert on navigational deflector arrays and quantum mechanics, regularly teaching advanced courses at the Academy as well as often serving as guest lecturers at colleges and universities around the Federation, working as a private researcher with the Daystrom Institute, and consulting for Starfleet and many other organizations. Even before he was a cadet, Nenyaht had spent hours a week working in one of her labs, first doing routine technical work and later developing his own projects, which grew in complexity as his knowledge increased. By the time he graduated from the Academy, he was known unofficially in Starfleet circles as someone who knew his way around the deflector; when he finished his master's degree through Daystrom's distance learning program a year before, that distinction became a little bit more official and his opinions carried a little bit more weight.

The deflector of the _Kirk_ had obviously been built with all of the latest advancements in mind, probably using his mother's latest research, if not her consultations in person. Although nothing on the _Enterprise_ was certainly nowhere near what he would consider out-dated, the _Kirk_ seemed to be leaps and bounds ahead. In fact, if he was reading it correctly, it looked almost as if it was set up for a quick conversion to transwarp, which was an experiment his mother and Captain B'Elanna Torres had been playing with in their limited free time.

"Quite a set-up, isn't it?" a lilting voice with what sounded like an English accent said from right behind his shoulder. He glanced behind him, seeing a tall and very thin woman with skin the color of chocolate milk, thick straight black hair pinned up, almond shaped blue-gray eyes, and the teal uniform of the sciences. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Yeah," he agreed with a slight smile. "But you don't look like you're in the right place."

She gave him a wide grin, showing off two rows of perfectly straight, white teeth. "Lt. Marjorie Shin," she said, offering her hand. "Biomedical engineering."

"Lt. Nenyaht," he replied. "Quantum mechanics and physical engineering."

She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Quite the resume."

"No, just a long title," he replied with a grin. He cleared his throat silently and looked back down at the console when he realized he had been holding her gaze too long. "So you're BME, and you work for the engineering department?"

Shin nodded, her eyes still on Nenyaht. "Yeah, we are pretty much the red-headed stepchild of the department." He looked at her askance with the phrase, which she took for confusion. "It is an expression," she explained with a small laugh. "I don't know where it comes from, but it means the member of the family nobody wants to claim as their own."

"I've heard it," he told her. When Abbey went through her old novels phase, it was one of the expressions she picked up, in addition to 'rain check'. "You're only the second person I've heard it from, though."

"My mum is a professor of English literature," Shin said. "She has passed along a number of strange idioms over the years." She grinned. "My youngest brother has red hair. I got my other brothers and sisters to tease him about it and tell him he is really a red-headed stepchild."

"I bet he appreciates that."

"No, not really," she said with a laugh. "Where have you heard the expression? From a red-headed stepchild?"

"Hardly," he replied, thinking that Abbey Paris was anything but. She may not have always fit in with the rest of her family, but that didn't mean they loved her or cared about her any less. "My friend growing up loved old Earth novels and would pick up on the vernacular. She used phrases that none of us really understood all the time."

"Old girlfriend?" Shin asked teasingly, her eyebrow raised again.

"No," he said, shaking his head with a laugh. Abbey was always a friend, never anything more. He couldn't help but wonder if that was his decision or hers. "Just a friend."

She looked like she was about to say something in response, but at that moment, Commander Aquene Noe walked into Engineering, his light green eyes scanning the room and silencing everyone. As a Mizarian, a species known for pacifism and non-confrontation, he hardly inspired fear, but many people found his vast intelligence to be somewhat intimidating.

He waited patiently for his engineering officers to quiet and gather around as best they could, which was not an easy feat when two hundred people were gathered into one space, even a space as large as Main Engineering. "Good evening," he said, his voice booming through the communications system. He bowed down slightly, the covering over his gray head hardly moving. "Welcome to the _U.S.S. Kirk_. I am glad to have each of you here. Over a thousand officers were considered for your positions, and I have selected each of you individually on the belief that you will prove to be an asset to this crew and this ship. I believe that each of you possess an intelligence that will complement my own."

"They aren't known for their modesty, are they?" Lt. Shin whispered to Nenyaht, prompting a shushing from him, although he did agree with her.

"You come from a mix of backgrounds," Commander Noe continued. "Some of you are recent graduates from Starfleet Academy, and I congratulate you on such a prestigious posting for your first position. I have no doubt that many of you will go far and will soon find yourselves to be chief engineers of your own vessels." _Way to rub it in_, Nenyaht thought bitterly. "Others of you are coming from other ships," Noe said, "and thus possess experience that will prove to be invaluable to our younger crewmembers. Do not hesitate to share your experiences with others, and help them learn from your successes as well as mistakes." He blinked slowly, the deep lines running vertically down his cheeks moving as he did so. "And finally, I have selected a number of you known to be authorities, if not experts, in your fields, some of which are leaving their own chief engineer positions to be here with us on this mission. You will be my advisors, my eyes and ears to your work and the work in your field. You will help me make the _Kirk_ the finest engineering department in all of Starfleet.

"After serving for several years at Starfleet Research and Development, I am not accustomed to the politics of running a ship's engineering department," Noe admitted. "I am confident that I will have no problems picking it up quickly," he added. Shin barely contained a snicker at another blatant reference to his own intelligence. "To help me ease into this transition are my two assistant chief engineers, Lt. Commander Walter Ng and Lt. Commander Quinn Taro," he said, nodding to the two officers standing just to his right. Ng nodded solemnly, and Taro gave a wide smile and wave. "Lt. Commanders Ng and Taro and I will each be leading a duty shift. This pattern, which I believe to be most efficient—" another snicker from Shin—"will continue throughout our mission, except in times when duty shifts must be lengthened for necessary repairs or refitting.

"With two hundred officers and over eight hundred enlisted personnel, the engineering department of the _Kirk_ is the largest of any Starfleet vessel by several factors. We are also the newest ship and have the most advanced technology, and I believe, the most advanced minds as well. Although I know a great deal about all aspects of starship engineering, I also know enough to realize that there are some who know more than me. For that reason, I have divided this department into ten smaller sections, each with one commanding officer. The junior officers will rotate through the sections in shifts that Lt. Commanders Ng and Taro and I deem appropriate, with the goal of each engineer gaining at least proficiency in each field of a starship engineering department. As I mentioned earlier, many of you junior engineers are not long for commanding your own engineering department. To do so, you must know each job an engineer may be called to perform intimately. The senior officers whom I have assigned as section heads already know this. For each section in the engineering department, there is another entire department on the ship with experience in that field, and these section chiefs must work closely with those departments to ensure proper communication and ease of operations. After I have announced the section chiefs, I ask these ten officers to stay behind and conference with myself and Lt. Commanders Ng and Taro. The rest of you are free to go until your first duty shifts as already assigned. Of course, I expect the beta shift personnel to stay and complete their shifts. As one final note, I hope you all are aware that I expect punctual arrival times from each engineer, from myself down to the lowest crewman. I expect your attention to be fully on your task while on duty, and while perfection would be ideal in any situation, I do realize that the most I can realistically ask from any individual would be your best effort, and I ask that of each of you in every duty shift. I know any change of scenery may be difficult, but I ask of each of you patience and understanding in this transition. I am confident that we will quickly all learn to work together efficiently and effectively.

"As far as the ten section chiefs, as I mentioned earlier, these are known experts in their fields, and I trust each of you to defer to their judgment in these matters. For propulsion, Lt. Commander Uday El-Lachem; weaponry, Lt. Loic; computer core, Lt. Ruchira Nishant; deflector controls, Lt. Nenyaht; auxiliary controls, Lt. Dwi Masters; support systems, Lt. Commander Nancy Fox; transporter systems, Lt. Mason Iriwanti; observational equipment and sensors, Lt. Commander Ontibile; structural engineering, Lt. Gesine Fergus; and biomedical engineering, Lt. Marjorie Shin. These ten, please stay. The rest of you may leave."

The announcement of the section chiefs came as a surprise to Nenyaht, who had never heard of a starship engineering section being organized in that way, but he did have to admit that he saw a certain logic in it. Just based on the number of people working in Engineering, it was more of a station or research facility than a traditional starship, and stations were typically set up in that manner, with "expert" officers leading smaller groups assigned to one specific task on the station or on repairs of visiting ships. He was also pleasantly surprised to hear his own name called out as one of the section chiefs, thinking that it almost made up for the fact that he wasn't a chief somewhere.

As commanded, he lingered behind with the other section chiefs, wondering how this was going to work out. Of the ten chiefs, he knew Lt. Masters, a classmate from the Academy, and had once heard a presentation from Lt. Commander El-Lachem, who had been considered a rising star in propulsion engineering even four years ago. Of the others, he didn't know anything, other than Lt. Shin's mother was a professor of English literature and she had a younger brother with red hair. _And there's something strangely familiar about her_, he reminded himself. He frowned as he followed the crowd into the Engineering Conference Room, wondering if he would ever be able to figure out what that was.


	11. Chapter 11

_B'hava'el System  
__Tempasa Militia Base, Bajor_

Captain Bhan Larina glanced around the room at her officers, feeling a pang of anticipation at what she would say at this meeting, which was an uncomfortable feeling for her. As the commanding officers of one of the best companies in the Infantry, if not the entire Bajoran Militia, it took a lot to make her feel as nervous as she felt at that moment.

As they had been trained to do, all of her officers and non-commissioned officers were waiting patiently for her to begin talking, albeit not at attention. As effectively as they had that trained into them, she trained it out of them. The last thing she wanted when on a mission was for one of her officers or soldiers to snap to attention or shout out her rank when the enemy was around. There was no better way to get shot at than to let the enemy know they had a commanding officer in their presence.

She studied each of the officers and NCOs in the room, taking the time to meet each with eye contact and a slight nod. She was proud to see that if they were as nervous as she, they were hiding it well. She turned to her executive officer, who nodded deeply for her to begin. He was the only other one who knew what Colonel Jena had told her a few days before.

"Thanks for coming," she began, turning her head slightly to nod to her first sergeant, the most senior NCO in her company. He had been a close advisor to her since she graduated from the Bajoran Military Academy, a scared second lieutenant who tried to mask that fear in false bravado. He had quickly informed her that the soldiers could sense her nervousness, and they would never respect her as an authority figure until she could respect herself in that role. As she rose through the ranks, he rose with her. "I had a meeting with Colonel Jena the other day regarding the future of Kejal Company," she began.

"Are you being transferred?" First Lieutenant Liro Rehaq interrupted. She fixed the reconnaissance platoon commander with a cold look.

"No, Lieutenant, I am not," she said, her voice icy. He swallowed deeply; they knew she did not like to be interrupted while giving a briefing. "_We_ are being transferred. The entire company will be deployed to serve with Starfleet on the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_." She held up a hand to stop the questions, seeing several mouths opening. "Before you ask for any specifics, let me finish. The _Kirk_ is scheduled to arrive in a little less than three weeks. We have been given two decks of the ship, which includes quarters for the officers and berths for the soldiers. We also have our own dining facilities, training facilities, and shuttle bays. Starfleet was kind enough to donate shuttles and runabouts for our transportation.

"We are to be the ground unit for the _Kirk_," she continued. "In this respect, our mission will be unchanged from what it is now. We will engage the enemy on the ground and deploy planet-side for reconnaissance and to take out any necessary infrastructure, just as we do now. The only difference will be that instead of being stationed on Bajor, we'll be stationed on the _Kirk_."

"Do our orders still come from Colonel Jena?" Second Lieutenant Whall Janese asked.

"Your orders still come from _me_," Bhan replied. "You don't have to be concerned with where my orders come from."

Lt. Liro scoffed. "If we wanted to serve on a Starfleet ship, we would have joined Starfleet."

"If the Federation ever gets around to accepting our membership application, we _will_ be in Starfleet," Second Lieutenant Yer Aleen commented.

"If you ever paid attention in your history courses, Aleen, you'd know that it was Bajor, not the Federation, that withdrew the application thirty years ago," Lt. Whall shot back. "You can't blame them for the fact that we're not a member."

"Is any of this relevant to our mission?" Bhan asked sarcastically. "Because, if it is, continue, by all means. If it's not, maybe you'd like to ask me some questions that are." She hadn't always been so blunt; when she had taken her first position as an infantry platoon commander, she had the philosophy that you could catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and tried to be polite to everyone she worked with, which didn't always come naturally to her. However, it didn't take her long to realize that both soldiers and officers were underestimating her, treating her more like the deferential, petite, blond woman she was being than the commanding officer of an Infantry platoon. To make matters worse, Bajorans never did have the reputation of being all that aggressive, even among other Bajorans. So she changed her way of interacting with people, and was pleased to see her reputation improve almost overnight. Sometimes, she still felt like she was being too hard on her junior officers; after all, it wasn't too long ago that had been a rifle platoon commander, then a reconnaissance platoon commander, before being a company executive officer and then company commander. However, she didn't get there by being coddled, and neither would they. When they made mistakes, it was her obligation to let them know. If she didn't, they would not only fail to learn, they would likely fail to survive the next mistake.

"How long are we going to be gone?" First Lieutenant Peran Heyab asked quietly. He was a soft-spoken man, the heavy weapons platoon commander. Despite his reputation from his last posting, Bhan hadn't thought much of him at first, mistaking one who didn't speak much for one who didn't have much to say. His first time in battle, however, he quickly proved her wrong. His leadership skills were amazing, and his tactical thinking was on par with, if not exceeding, her own.

"We're starting with a year," Bhan replied. "After that, we'll reassess and see how things are going before deciding how much longer we'll be gone. Obviously, if this doesn't work at all and proves to be a bad idea for our company, we'll come back early."

Peran frowned at the news. "My daughter turned four months two days ago," he said.

"I know, Lieutenant. I visited her and your wife in the hospital after she was born," Bhan pointed out.

"I would be missing her first words, first steps," he mused.

"At least your wife will be there to see them," Bhan said harshly. Her own father had also been a career Militia officer, first in the Occupation and remaining afterwards to fight against the Dominion. Bhan had been born after both of those conflicts, but she could still remember long stretches of time when her father was gone for his military obligations. Since her mother had died a few days after Bhan's birth, most of those absences had been spent in boarding schools, but Vedeks were a poor substitute for the father she always worked hard to impress.

She softened, realizing that not everyone had the same views as she did. "I know it's a lot to ask, of all of you. If you do not want to take this posting, I will do my best to find a replacement for you before our departure in three weeks. However, with that short time, I can't guarantee that I will be successful."

Silence fell over the room before Lt. Whall spoke up. "I'm in," she said with a small grin.

"So am I, Captain," Lt. Liro added. One by one, each of the other officers and non-commissioned officers nodded their heads.

Captain Bhan nodded. "Thank you," she said to them. Turning to her first sergeant, she asked, "Antos?"

He also nodded. "Somebody has to keep an eye on you, Captain," he replied, his deep voice resonant. She smiled back before turning to face the others again.

"Thank you, again. This will not be easy, on any of us, but I believe that we will be successful. In the meantime, I requested and was granted three weeks of leave for each of you. Use it however you wish, but I do want to caution you against taking it _too_ easy. We will resume our training as soon as the _Kirk_ arrives." She paused before smiling thinly; they all knew exactly what allowing themselves to fall out of shape would result in. "Enjoy. I'll see you in three weeks."


	12. Chapter 12

_Alpha quadrant  
__Federation space  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

The engineering conference room was impressive, a large viewport along one wall, the others covered in computer consoles and viewscreens. The large table taking up the majority of the space was similarly technologically advanced, essentially a large computer console with fifteen stations, each one accompanied by a plush chair. As he settled into one of those chairs, Lt. Nenyaht found himself hoping they had engineering conferences often.

"Nice," Lt. Shin muttered as she ran her hand along the edge of the table, coming very close to where Nenyaht was resting his own hand before taking the seat next to him.

"Think it's as nice as the one on deck one?" he asked, trying to decide if she was flirting with him as he activated his console to see what functions he could perform from the conference room. From the looks of it, pretty close to everything.

"Nicer," Lt. Dwi Masters said, taking the seat on the other side of Nenyaht. "I was on the engineering team at UP. They just have a standard table on deck one."

"That seems like a waste," Nenyaht commented. "So they wooed you away from station life?"

Masters waved a spotted hand dismissively. "It was time to get back into space." He paused, then continued, "And Tasha and I split, so it was a bit awkward going to work for her every day."

"Oh, sorry to hear that," Nenyaht said sympathetically. He remembered Tasha Pacheco, an engineering major a year ahead of him and Masters at the Academy. She had been one of the lab assistants for a warp systems course their second year, a high-achieving cadet who often seemed willing to sell out anybody necessary to make it to the top. He had never cared much for her, but his half-Trill classmate had declared her to be "complicated and misunderstood—and hot," and began pursuing her.

"Wasn't a big deal," Masters replied, again waving dismissively. He always seemed to be talking with his hands. "We got married with a limited contract, and we definitely did _not_ want to renew. That was two months ago. I was still in her research group, though, so I've been _trying_ to get away from UP since. She can be a real _bitch _sometimes." Nenyaht snorted, but refrained from saying anything. "I haven't gotten a chance to talk to too many people on board yet. Anyone else from our Academy days around?"

"Do you remember Abbey Paris?" Nenyaht asked. "She was two years behind us, on the gymnastics team."

"Paris?" Masters repeated, thinking. "Oh, the Klingon twins. Yeah, I remember them. What is she up to?"

"She just graduated from medical school. She's a flight surgeon with OFA."

"Flight surgeon?" he asked, laughing with disbelief. "I thought her brother was the smart one. Didn't you used to tutor her in engineering?"

Nenyaht clenched his teeth together tightly in frustration. Joe Paris took after their mother—he had a natural knack for engineering and anything involving math, always thought of things a little bit differently than everyone around him, coming up with solutions to problems that baffled most others, and seemed to have unnatural strength and endurance. He completed majors in both tactics and engineering while serving on Red Squad and captaining the parrises squares team, a combination that would have exhausted any other Starfleet cadet. He ended up graduating with Interstellar Honors as the class salutatorian. Abbey, on the other hand, was easily just as smart, if not smarter, but her interests lie outside of the traditional Starfleet studies of math, physics, and astronomy. Less driven than her brother or mother, she didn't see it necessary to give her studies the same attention as other aspects of her life, such as her gymnastics or even her music. "She was a microbiology and genetics major," Nenyaht said. "She didn't have much use for math and engineering."

Masters nodded slightly and looked like he was about to say something, but at that moment, Commander Noe entered the room and took his seat at the head of the table. "Sorry about the delay," he said, not offering any explanation of where he was. "Before we go any further, I think it would be best if we went around the table and introduced ourselves. Give us your name and rank, your last posting, and your outside interests." The engineers all looked at him blankly, so he added, "I believe this is what the humans refer to as an 'ice-breaker'. I will start."

As they went around the table, Nenyaht couldn't help but notice how well they all fit the mold of the stereotypical engineer with nothing else going on in their lives—even their outside interests were all related to engineering, such as holoprograms, designing shuttles, building model ships, and the like. The only one who broke the mold was Lt. Shin, who had just left the Vulcan Science Academy and listed her interests as "gardening, any form of dancing, and good plays." Even though he had just met the younger biomedical engineer, none of that really surprised Nenyaht.

Lt. Commander Ng explained the rotation plan to them after the introductions were complete. Since smaller sections, such as biomedical engineering, deflector control, and observational systems didn't need as many engineers as propulsion or structural systems, there was no set amount of time any one junior officer would be in any one section, but he emphasized that it wasn't necessary for them to know the specifics of the rotations—they would be told who would be working in their section on any given shift, and the junior engineers would know where they are to go. He also made sure they were aware that any emergency or major repair in one section would require engineers being pulled out of others to assist. They all had that figured out already.

When he opened the floor for questions, Shin was the first to say something. "Will there be any chances for us to rotate through other sections, for the purposes of cross-training and maintaining proficiency?"

Lt. Commander Taro nodded. "You will each be scheduled for one shift a week in another section as part of your normal duty shifts. If you would like more, bring it up to Commander Ng or myself, and we'll schedule you for additional shifts."

"Actually, Lt. Shin, due to the fact that this is your first ship's posting and your training is a bit nontraditional, you have two shifts a week of cross-training," Commander Noe interjected. Shin nodded her understanding. Nenyaht tried to get her attention to ask what that was about, but if she noticed, she gave no indication as she continued to listen to the remaining questions and their answers.

After the briefing, Shin gathered the few PADDs she had brought with her and glanced at the chronometer on the wall. "I heard this place has a bar," she said to Lt. Nenyaht. "You want to check it out?"

He also glanced at the chronometer: 2230. He hadn't realized it was that late. He was going to beg off, thinking that he should probably find Abbey and see if they were still capable of having a real conversation, but then changed his mind. She had said she had a shift to work in the flight sickbay that night; for all he knew, she was still there. And even if she wasn't, she was just as capable of contacting him as he was of her, and if she wanted to talk, she knew how to get a hold of him. "Sure," he replied, shooting Shin a wide grin. He straightened and adopted a serious expression. "As senior engineering officers, it's our responsibility to become familiar with our surroundings."

She laughed, her slate-colored eyes shining as they made their way out of the conference room.

---

Just as Lt. Nenyaht predicted, 2230 found Dr. Abbey Paris in the same place she had been since 1400: the flight sickbay on deck forty-seven. After meeting with Dr. Rex Jackson, the senior flight surgeon, and Dr. Amanda Mallard, the _Kirk_'s CMO, about her residency requirements, she was given a brief break for dinner—which meant she was allowed to use the flight sickbay's replicator to grab a sandwich to eat before the first set of pilots were scheduled to arrive at 1715. There were fifteen flight surgeons for two thousand pilots and fifteen hundred maintenance personnel. Fortunately, the maintenance personnel didn't need flight physicals, and equally as fortunate, not all pilots were coming in at once. They split both the pilots and medical personnel into three groups, so for the first shift, there were five physicians to give physicals to more than six hundred fifty pilots. They quickly worked out a system, sending the pilots who had had a complete flight physical in the last three months away and having the nurses and medics screen the remaining pilots, making sure their medical records were available by the time they reached the doctors, streamlining the process for the flight surgeons.

"Congratulations, Lieutenant. You pass with flying colors," Paris informed the pilot. She gave a half-smile. "No pun intended. Next." The lieutenant hopped off the biobed, making room for the next patient.

Already resetting the bed's controls, Abbey hardly gave the tall, dark-haired ensign a glance as he sauntered over, the cocky smile she had grown to associate with pilots everywhere on his face. "Records," she demanded, holding her hand out. Her patience had run out five hours and seventy patients ago; now she was wondering why she decided to go into medicine in the first place. She just wanted to go back to her quarters and sleep until her contract on the _Kirk_ was fulfilled.

He handed the PADD over with a smirk as she gestured for him to get on the bed. "I have specific medical settings," he informed her, watching her enter commands into the biobed controls.

"I bet you do," she muttered. His grin widened, but he didn't say anything. She gave the PADD only a cursory glance before setting it aside, reaching for her tricorder. "Any past medical problems?" she asked before frowning at her tricorder. "What the hell?"

"I'm one-quarter Betazoid," he said, barely containing the urge to chuckle. "It might help if you set your equipment to that, like I told you to."

Her cheeks flushed brightly as she reset her tricorder to the proper hybrid settings. She glanced up at him, saw the characteristic Betazoid black eyes smirking back at her. She could hear the words of one of her pediatrics attendings echoing in her head: _You need to _look_ at your patients, Abigail. A good doctor can tell more about a patient with his eyes than a bad one with his tricorder_. "Let's start over," she said slowly, forcing herself not to look away from his smug face. "I'm Dr. Paris, I'll be your flight surgeon this evening."

"Ensign Andrew Riker." She groaned inwardly; not only was he a pilot, and thus already not lacking any ego, he was the pilot son two well-known former Starfleet officers, unless there happened to be multiple Riker families with Betazoid blood.

"Who is your hybridologist, and when was your last physical?" she asked, again activating her tricorder, this time properly set.

"Dr. T'Rav, and eight months ago. No abnormalities. I did have pavor nocturnus as a child, though."

"Night terrors," Paris said, nodding slightly. "Due to the increased serotonin in the pontine tegmentum of Betazoids. As long as you're not planning on taking a nap while in your flier, I don't see any problems," she said, closing the tricorder.

"My one positive heterotic trait: increased serotonin causing bad dreams," Riker joked. "I bet you know all about heterosis."

"We learned about positive, intermediate, and negative heterosis in medical school, yes," Paris said, keeping her voice even as she noted the normal exam findings on the PADD. She knew what Riker was getting at, and was choosing to ignore it. Her hybrid status had always been a point of contention for her, mostly because she was so unlike any other part-Klingon hybrid, with her blond hair, blue eyes, and short stature.

"That's not what I meant," Riker replied, his dark eyes twinkling. "Quarter Klingon, right?"

"That's none of your damned business, Ensign," she said harshly. "You've passed your physical. Leave."

He eased himself off the biobed, his eyes still on her as she reset her tricorder. "What time do you get off shift, Dr. Paris?" he asked with a playful smirk.

"Not soon enough," she muttered darkly.


	13. Chapter 13

Lt. Marjorie Shin was laughing as she motioned the waiter for a refill of her drink, some sort of brightly colored juice mixed with Earth rum. "He didn't _really_ say that, did he?"

"He did," Lt. Nenyaht insisted. "But you have to remember, he was talking to a six-year-old—"

"The six-year-old son of the quantum mechanics professor," she finished, still laughing, a bit more flirtatiously than necessary. "You would think a Vulcan would know better." He only shrugged and grinned as he took a drink from his bottle of Ktarian beer. "Come on, tell another."

"I've told several already," he replied. "I believe it's your turn."

"My stories aren't nearly as interesting," she insisted, pouting slightly. That did it; he was convinced she was flirting. "You've traveled around the quadrant, your parents are Academy professors, you've stayed at the captain's house—is there anything I've forgotten?"

"My godmother is Starfleet's Fleet Admiral," he offered.

Her eyes widened in surprise. "Admiral Janeway is your godmother?" she repeated.

He nodded. "But I call her Kathryn."

"You're on a first-name basis with the highest ranking and most decorated Starfleet officer alive today."

As if on cue, the doors slid open, revealing none other than Captain Harry Kim and Admiral Kathryn Janeway, looking casual in their off-duty clothing, laughing about some shared joke. Seeing Nenyaht seated against the viewport, Janeway smiled broadly, directing Kim to their table.

"Nenyaht," she said, holding her arms out for an embrace. Never one to deny the Fleet Admiral of anything, he rose and gave her a hug. "It's been too long," she scolded.

"I know," he said. "I've been—"

"Busy," she finished with a smile. "I'm a Starfleet officer, too. I know how it is." The smile faltered. "We missed you at the memorial."

"The _Enterprise_ was too far away to make it on time," he explained softly. "I'm sorry, Kathryn. I would have liked to be there."

"He would have understood. Icheb never would have wanted you to neglect your duties on his behalf."

He winced at the words, knowing that that was exactly what his godfather would have said. "How are Naomi and Sabrina?"

"They're doing well," Janeway said with a nod. "Icheb had been gone for so long on that mission that I don't think they've registered that anything is different. I don't know if Sabrina even remembers him." She glanced behind her godson to the young woman sitting at his table. "I'm sorry, we're interrupting."

"I should have made introductions," Nenyaht apologized. "This is Lt. Marjorie Shin, the biomedical engineering section chief. We had just come from the engineering briefing. Marjorie, Admiral Kathryn Janeway and Captain Harry Kim."

"Sir!" Shin exclaimed, quickly shooting to attention, her cheeks reddening slightly. Janeway gave her an amused glance.

"At ease, Lieutenant, before you sprain something," she said, watching Kim out of the corner of her eye.

"That's still not funny," he said dryly. Turning to Shin, he explained, "She said those same words to me the first time I reported for duty."

"Actually, Harry, I believe I said, 'at ease, _Ensign_, before you sprain something,'" Janeway joked. Nenyaht laughed, but Shin smiled like she didn't quite get the joke.

"You two can sit down and join us," Nenyaht offered, gesturing toward the table.

"I wouldn't want to intrude," Janeway protested.

"No, please," Shin insisted, her eyes brightening. The stiffness of a few seconds ago aside, she seemed to be lacking any hesitation that a junior officer would normally have in such a situation. "Join us. Nenyaht has been telling me stories, I would love to hear some more. I could only imagine what stories you would have to tell."

Janeway still looked amused, but shrugged and conceded. "I'm afraid Nenyaht's a better story teller than I am. He gets that from his father." She turned to her godson. "How _is_ Chakotay? I haven't had the chance to see him in awhile. I understand you had lunch with him today."

"Both him _and _Mom. It was a bit awkward; I don't think I've seen them together in the same room in seven years, since the twenty-fifth reunion."

Janeway's eyebrows rose. "Seven was there? I thought she was guest lecturer on Vulcan this semester."

Nenyaht shook his head. "That was _last_ semester. She's back at the Academy for awhile."

"Well, we should get together for coffee soon," the admiral declared.

"One problem with that, Kathryn," Nenyaht pointed out with a slight frown. "She's there, and you're here. Speaking of which, why _are_ you here?"

"I have business on Klaestron IV, which is on the way to Bajor, so Harry offered me a lift."

"She read about the services aboard the _Kirk_ in Harry Kim's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Kim joked.

"Oh, I've ready that book," Shin said, trying to contribute to a conversation that was obviously beyond her. Her cheeks reddened slightly when the other three officers chuckled.

"If anyone was writing a guide to the galaxy, it would probably be Tom Paris," Janeway remarked dryly.

Kim laughed. "Only if you wanted a guide to the galaxy's bars and jails," he commented. "He once told me about his system for classifying the prisons of the Milky Way. The Akritirian maximum security detention facility is a one, the Federation penal colony in Auckland a ten. He even came up with a pros/cons list of every jail cell he has ever been in."

"The Akritirian prison had pros?" Janeway asked in wonder.

Kim ticked them off on his fingers. "Don't have to worry about the weather, never have to decide what to eat for dinner, plenty of warning before more prisoners arrive. The list goes on and on."

Janeway smiled and shook her head slowly. "Speaking of Tom, how's Abbey? Where _is_ Abbey?"

"Probably still in sickbay performing flight physicals," Kim commented. "They have quite a few to get through in the next few days. You heard about these two and their quarters, right?" he asked, gesturing toward Nenyaht.

"That they're right across the corridor from each other?" Janeway asked with a smile. "Sounds like a security risk if you ask me."

"You're not the first to say that," Nenyaht said with a roll of his eyes. "Besides, it's not as if Joe will be there. He was the brains behind the operation."

"Joe may have come up with the mission specifics, but I happen to know it was Abbey who usually came up with the ideas," Janeway replied. "I've known since she was just learning how to walk that she was going to be trouble. She had that 'I didn't do it, I'm just a cute little girl' routine down pat." She shook her head and smiled at the memory. "I'm just hurt that I was never the target of one of these famous pranks."

Nenyaht laughed. "Joe wanted to do something, but Abbey put her foot down and said no. That was the semester she was in your First Contact course, and she needed an A to make Dean's List. I'll tell her you were disappointed, though."

Shin, who had been sitting quietly during the exchange, laughed slightly. "This Abbey sounds like someone I need to meet."

"If you keep hanging around Nenyaht, you're bound to before too long," Janeway said, her eyebrows raised. "Those two have been inseparable since they were kids."

"I wouldn't say _that_," Nenyaht protested. Janeway only smiled knowingly in response before standing from her chair.

"It's getting late," she said, "and I'm not as young as I used to be. I think it's about time for me to return to my quarters." She waved the others back to their chairs when they rose. "It was good to meet you, Lieutenant," she said, nodding toward to Shin. To Nenyaht, she asked, "Would you join me tomorrow morning for breakfast in my quarters? We have some catching up to do."

"Sure," he replied. "I'm on alpha shift, though, so we'll have to make it early."

"Oh-seven-hundred?" she asked. He nodded, and she bid them goodnight. A minute later, Kim also got up to leave.

"It _is_ getting late," Shin said, now again alone at the table with Nenyaht. "Alpha shift is going to be starting before we know it. We should probably be going, too."

"Right," Nenyaht replied, nodding. He paused, then asked, "Will I see you again?"

"Of course," she replied with a grin as they passed through the doors. "After all, we work in the same department." Her grin widened and she gave him a wink before turning to head down the opposite direction.


	14. Chapter 14

Dr. Abbey Paris was already unfastening her uniform shirt as she stepped across the threshold into her quarters, her first shift as a physician finally over at 0300. _Only thirteen hours of straight work_, she thought with an ironic smile as she tossed the teal-colored top on her couch and kicked off her heeled boots. From what Drs. Jackson and Mallard said, she could expect quite a few more of those in the next year as she completed her residency requirements.

"Valerian root tea, sweet, extra hot," she ordered into her replicator as she unceremoniously dumped the top on her couch.

*Problems with insomnia, Abbey?* her replicator mockingly asked her, making her jump back in surprise.

"Joey," she hissed, her eyes narrowing dangerously. He even programmed it with his own voice. "Valerian root tea, sweet, extra hot," she repeated through gritted teeth.

*Most insomnia is from poor sleep habits,* Joe Paris' disembodied voice continued. *Going to bed at a reasonable hour every hour and waking up the same time every morning—*

"Shut up and give me my damned tea!" Abbey exclaimed loudly.

*Tsk, tsk. Quite the temper, Abigail. Must get that from your mother's side of the family.* He continued to prattle on, but Abbey was no longer hearing it. She had always had a hard time controlling her temper when she was tired, and the constant fatigue of medical school did nothing to change that. In her fury, she picked up the first thing her hand contacted—a standard Starfleet-issue vase that she meant to recycle the day before—and hurled it at the replicator. The voice stopped.

"Damn it!" she exclaimed. Without even thinking about it, she spun on her heels and stalked out of her quarters. She hardly paused as she crossed the corridor and entered Nenyaht's codes to his quarters. Just as she suspected, it hadn't taken her any amount of time to figure them out; they were the same codes he had at the Academy.

The sleeping engineer awoke to someone shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes into narrow slits, seeing the angry face of a quarter-Klingon doctor. "Get up," she demanded. "I need an engineer."

He groaned and tried to roll over to cover his eyes, but she quickly pinned his shoulders down. "What time is it?" he finally moaned.

"A little after 0300," she replied. "Come _on_." She stood there with her hands on her hips, waiting, until he finally threw off the covers.

"This better be quick," he said with a sigh. "I'm having breakfast with Kathryn in four hours." She didn't say anything as she led the way back across the corridor to her quarters.

Seeing the replicator, he gave a low whistle. "What happened?" he asked.

"Joey," she said darkly.

"Joe smashed your replicator?" he asked, confused.

She shook her head quickly. "No, I did that," she admitted. "He reprogrammed it."

"Well, you're in luck," Nenyaht said thoughtfully, kneeling in front of the offending equipment. He removed the outer panel, revealing intact circuitry inside. "The replicator did more damage to the vase than it did to the replicator. You only dented the panel."

"Great," she said sarcastically. "Now can you fix what my _petaQ_ of a brother did?"

He couldn't help but chuckle; she only spoke in Klingon when she was angry or embarrassed. He was guessing it was the former. "What did he do?"

"I tried ordering some tea when I got in," she said, glaring at the replicator. "He programmed it to give me a lecture about my sleeping habits."

"Probably because you were using it at 0300," he said thoughtfully. "Let me try to change the chronometer on the replicator and see what happens." He made the necessary adjustments before putting in an order. Glancing over at Paris, he said, "Extra hot valerian root tea, sweet." She raised her eyebrows, impressed that he remembered how she drank her tea.

*Hey! Who are you and what are you doing using my sister's replicator? No men in her quarters! Out! Out!* Abbey looked surprised at the words, but Nenyaht just laughed.

"Hold on a minute," he said, rising. He was surprised to see Abbey standing so close to where he had been kneeling, but quickly recovered, placing his hands on her shoulders to move her aside. Less than two minutes later, he returned to her quarters with two steaming mugs of tea. He handed one over to her with an apologetic half-smile. "I can fix it," he said as she sighed in defeat. "But I'm going to have to be well-rested before I can attempt to undo his work. I don't have to tell you this, but your brother is a talented programmer."

"You're right," Paris replied, taking a sip of tea. "You didn't have to tell me."

He grinned. "Long day in sickbay," he observed. "You just got off duty, right?"

"How'd you know?"

He pointed to her uniform trousers, her skin-tight black undershirt, the uniform top draped over her couch, the heeled boots kicked off near the door. She was almost obsessively tidy; there was no way she could stand to leave her things out. "You haven't picked up yet, and you always get out of uniform as soon as possible. Since you're half out of uniform and have stuff lying around, you must have just gotten off."

"Excellent powers of observation, detective," she said with a half-smile. She sighed and shook her head. "I'm going to kill him."

"Joe?"

She nodded. "This is so like him. Or, at least, the old him." She sighed again. "I don't know how much time you've spent with him lately, but he's changed. He's more serious now, almost paranoid. It's so strange."

He didn't want to tell her that he saw her brother on a fairly regular basis, once or twice every few months, more frequently than she saw him, if Joe was to be believed, and much more frequently than Abbey and Nenyaht had seen each other. He knew he shouldn't feel guilty about that—he had been as much Joe's friend as Abbey's growing up—but it just seemed so strange to have remained close to one twin while becoming so distant from the other. "He's an intelligence operative," he pointed out. "Paranoid is how he stays alive."

"I know, but I still…Sometimes I miss him. Joey. I miss having him around, I miss how he used to be when we were kids. I miss how things seemed…normal."

"The attacks hit him hard," Nenyaht said softly. "He lost a lot."

Her head snapped to face him, her eyes narrowed into a cold glare. "_Don't_ you _dare _talk about who lost what that day. I lost a lot more than Joey."

"I'm sorry. I know—"

"I lost my aunt, my cousin, three-quarters of my team, my career, my fiancée, my _life_, Nate. Compared to that, what the hell did Joey lose?"

"He lost his aunt and cousin, too," Nenyaht pointed out. "And he almost lost _you_," he added emphatically. This, at least, was familiar: Abbey getting fired up, him remaining the calm voice of reason. Six years of silence hadn't changed that. "You didn't see him when you were in a coma. I didn't think anything could rattle the great Joseph Kohlar Paris, but that really shook him up. His world didn't quite make sense to him."

She eyed him for a moment, trying to figure out if he was telling the truth before she snorted dismissively. "Joey doesn't need me," she snapped. "Joey doesn't need _anybody_. Just ask him, he'll tell you." He only smiled knowing and took another sip of tea in response.

"You're taller," he said, dropping the subject after an extended period of silence. He didn't want his first conversation with her after six years to be an argument about what her brother feels.

"Hmm?"

"You used to come up to here," he said, gesturing vaguely around his lower torso. "Now you're closer to my shoulder."

"People grow, Nate," she said teasingly.

"Not after they're nineteen."

She shrugged a shoulder. "I grew fourteen centimeters in the six months after I stopped training."

He knew what that meant: after the attack forced her to give up her sport. "Isn't that a lot for a twenty-one-year-old?"

"Not really," she said. "It's not unusual for gymnasts to have a growth spurt after they stop training. Nobody knows the exact reason why, but some think it's the body getting caught up to the size it would be if it weren't for the constant stresses of the sport."

"You're still pretty short."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," she said sarcastically, but with a smile. The smile faltered slightly. "Listen, Nate, about what I said…"

"Abbey, we don't have to talk about—" His words were interrupted by the klaxons of a red alert, followed immediately by the chirping of Nenyaht's combadge.

"Did you _sleep_ with that on?" Paris asked in wonder.

He shushed her as he tapped it. "Nenyaht here," he said.

*Report to deflector controls, Lieutenant,* the voice replied in clipped tones before signing off.

He sighed and set aside his mug. "I guess two hours is enough sleep," he said dryly. "We'll finish this later, okay?" She nodded quickly, avoiding his eyes. He directed her chin so her eyes met his, and she nodded again. He dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head before racing back on duty.


	15. Chapter 15

_Alpha quadrant  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

Admiral Kathryn Janeway glanced around the deck one conference room with a vague expression of amusement on her face. Senior officers were slowly filtering into the room, still so new to the ship and each other that instead of making small talk or gossiping about the events in the Officer's Mess, they were making introductions. Some nodded to her, sitting away from the table against one of the side walls, but most either didn't notice the Fleet Admiral, or chose to ignore her presence.

Captain Harry Kim was standing behind his chair, facing the viewport out to space, his posture and mannerisms an almost exact duplicate of her own from her days as a captain. She smiled warily at that; even more than thirty years after _Voyager_ returned to the Alpha quadrant, she was still seeing the ways that mission had impacted her officers.

The similarities between this briefing and the ones on _Voyager_ ended with the captain's posture. Turning her gaze away from her former Ops officer to the rest of the senior staff, she mused at the differences between this group and her former staff. Near the end of their journey, her closest advisors consisted of two lieutenant commanders, two lieutenants junior grade, an ensign, a hologram with no rank, and a smattering of civilians. There was nobody in the conference room aboard the _Kirk_ with a rank lower than lieutenant commander; three wore the four pips of captain. _It's a different playing field these days_, Janeway mused.

As the last chair became occupied, Kim turned from the viewport toward his officers. He didn't take his seat at the head of table, choosing instead to remain standing, leaning slightly over the table on his hands. It was another posture Janeway often adopted during tense briefings, and she again had to fight the urge to grin at it. "Welcome to the _Kirk_," he finally said with a sardonic smile. "This isn't quite what I had in mind for our first briefing. We'll all get the chance to introduce ourselves and get to know each other later, but for right now, I'm going to get down to business." He tapped a few controls at his station on the table, the only controls on its surface. Instantly, the large wall monitor on the other side of the table became active, displaying a tactical chart. In the center was a green Starfleet insignia, representing the _Kirk_. Along the entire right side of the screen was a series of red Nygleian symbols. "About two hours ago, we detected a Nygleian armada point seven light years away from our position. We were able to go to cloak, and I don't believe we've been detected." He tapped a few more controls, and an astrometrics chart overlade the tactical display. "We believe they're headed here, Zeva V, 2.4 light-years away. The only thing we can't figure out is _why_. Climactically, it seems to be ideal for them—the average temperature is a few degrees cooler than Earth, with atmospheric oxygen content around seventeen percent, which by our data seems to be as close to the conditions on Nygleia as can be found in the Federation. However, it's on the wrong side of the Federation." He expanded the astrometrics display into a rough starchart of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. "Nygleian space is on the opposite side of the Beta quadrant, near the boarder of the Delta quadrant. The Zeva system is near the opposite border of the Federation. The planet holds no tactical advantage and doesn't have any resources that aren't found on a thousand planets between here and Nygleian space."

"What about its people?" Lt. Commander Boston Toth asked. "Could there be any draw to the Zevians?"

"I don't see what," Dr. Mallard said, her fair forehead wrinkled in concentration. "They live an average of sixty years, average male weight and height is fifty kilos and 165 centimeters—definitely not ideal for manual labor. The centers for independent thought in their brains are rather small compared to most other humanoids, which means they're unusually trainable and tend to offer little resistance to outside forces. However, if an easily conquerable species were what they desired, the Zevians wouldn't be my first choice—the Mizar system is a few light-years closer to Nygleian space than Zeva, Mizarians never offer resistance, and they're vastly intelligent. Not that I'm suggesting Mizar as an alternative to the Nygleians," she was quick to say to Commander Noe. Turning back to the group, she concluded, "There are a dozen other Federation species, all closer to Nygleia, which would be more ideal for Nygleian conquer than the Zevians."

"Whatever the reasons, this is where the Nygleians have chosen to go," Kim interjected, "which means this is where _we _need to go." He gave an ironic smile and turned to Captain Brad Lopez. "What do you say, Captain? Is OFA's newest fleet ready for a test drive?"

"We're ready, Captain," Lopez replied, frowning slightly. "From what we've seen of Nygleian tactics lately, however, a ground unit might be better suited. It's too bad they couldn't wait a few weeks for us to get the Bajorans first."

"We'll be sure to let them know how inconvenient they're being," Kim replied. "But I think you're right. We should be ready for a ground invasion and casualties." He turned to Dr. Mallard. "How many physicians do we have with field medical training?"

"All of our flight surgeons," Mallard replied without pause. "It's part of their training. Maybe five or ten of the staff physicians are field trained as well."

He nodded. "Keep three flight surgeons on board, send the rest down, as well as all staff physicians with field training. We'll take them down in a runabout as soon we arrive."

"No," Dr. Mallard protested. "No physician will be leaving this ship until the Nygleians are done dropping their bombs or whatever it they're going to be doing. I'm not sending my people into danger."

Kim frowned. "With all due respect, Doctor, these are Starfleet officers—"

"Dead doctors don't do anybody any good," Mallard said bluntly.

He nodded slowly. "Very well. We'll send them down once the field is clear. In the meantime, Commander Nash, send a message to the Bajorans, appraise them of the situation and let them know we'll be there for the ground unit as soon as we can. Commander Toth, Captain Lopez, I want you to look over the political and geographical data on Zeva V. We're going to need several potential landing sites for both medical personnel and emergency landings for the fliers. Ideally, the medical teams should set up near or in existing hospitals. We may not be able to come up with a site until after we see what the Nygleians do to the infrastructure, but it's not a bad idea to come up with some possibilities." He paused, looking around the room. "Is there anything else?"

"There is one other thing, sir," the ship's first officer, Commander Ed Nash, said, nodding toward Admiral Janeway. "Admiral, I can arrange a runabout from Starbase 621 to come pick you up and take you to Klaestron IV."

Janeway raised her eyebrows. "That won't be necessary, Commander, but thank you."

"Admiral, we are talking about flying directly into a combat zone. It's likely to be dangerous."

"I don't doubt it," Janeway replied dryly. "But I did not get the reputation of being the captain who brought down the Borg by hiding under my desk every time things got a little scary. I'm just fine here." She smiled thinly. "Besides, it will be nice to see this little experiment in military science in action. Do you mind, Harry?"

"I think a little Kathryn Janeway is just what this mission needed," he joked. "You're welcome to stay as long as you like, Admiral." Turning to his flight controller, he asked, "Time to Zeva V?"

"Six hours at maximum warp," Lt. Commander Aline Jorda replied. She paused, then added, "The Nygleian armada will be there in five and a half."

"Then we're going to have to be ready for some damage control," Kim declared. "Continue to monitor the armada; I want to know of any changes as they occur. Let's get to work. We don't want to disappoint the admiral, now do we? Dismissed."


	16. Chapter 16

The flight sickbay was bustling with activity, with the last of the pilots waiting for their flight physicals and the physicians trying to finish those while getting ready for their upcoming mission to the Zeva V. Standing just inside the sliding doors, Captain Harry Kim could barely hear himself think over the din of equipment moving and people shouting questions and answers across the space. If this was what it was like on a daily basis, he didn't know how anybody could work there a full shift and stay sane. Then again, thinking of some of the Starfleet physicians he knew and had known--including the one he had been married to--maybe they weren't all that sane to begin with.

"Abbey," he called out, seeing a flash of blond hair over a ridged forehead.

"I'm a little busy right now, Captain," she replied, not pausing as she traded one PADD for another. She scrolled through the data with a frown on her face. "Crewman," she called out to a nearby medic. "We're going to need at least twice as much anesthizine. The anetrizine isn't going to do much."

"What's the difference?" he asked.

"The pharmacokinetics," she replied, already moving on to the next PADD. "Anetrizine is a prodrug anesthetic. In humans, it's metabolized to its active form. In Zevians, it's immediately bound to abinium, which is a protein found in their bloodstream. Once in the bound state, it's inactivated. Anesthizine is the active form of the drug, and it's just different enough that it doesn't bind to abinium. It's one of the few anesthetics effective on Zevians."

"I'll replicate more right away." She only nodded, her mind already on the next task.

"Are you going to the surface?" Kim asked, following closely behind his niece as she moved through sickbay.

"Just as soon as we get the clearance," she replied, pressing her thumb into the PADD to confirm the contents of a storage container before moving on to another.

"I think you should be one of the three to stay," he said. She turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised and an amused expression on her face.

"Unfortunately for you, my commanding officers don't agree."

"_I_ am one of your commanding officers," he countered, again following as she crossed sickbay.

"Actually, Harry, you're not," she said, stepping around him toward another storage container. "I looked into it. Doctors take orders from higher ranked doctors. Dr. Mallard is the top of my chain of command on this vessel, and her orders come from Admiral Delaney. In times of combat, flight surgeons technically fall into the Offense Force Alpha chain of command, which means that if there were an argument between Dr. Mallard—that's _Captain_ Mallard, MD—and _Captain_ Lopez about the utilization of the flight surgeons, Captain Lopez would win. I hope it doesn't come down to that. Anyway, I don't hear your name anywhere in there."

"I give orders to Lopez and Mallard," Kim pointed out.

"No, you don't," Paris replied. "Not technically. They listen to you out of respect because they're on _your_ ship, but you're not in either of their chains of command." She paused to scroll through the contents of another container on a PADD before glancing back up at him. "Listen, Harry, I appreciate that you're trying to keep me safe, but _stop_. Everyone needs to stop thinking I'm going to break if somebody looks at me the wrong way. _I am a Starfleet officer_. Start letting me act like one." She scanned through the crowds in the small space again. "Crewman!" she called out. "What were you planning on treating with these antibiotics? Pneumonia? We're going to need coverage for _wound infections_. Tieriglian, gantromycin, lipinem, quatrocyclotinidine, and anobactrim."

"Aye, sir."

She turned back to Kim. "I'm not a kid anymore," she said in a low voice before turning away.

"No," Kim said softly as she began barking orders to another medic, her gait stiff with purpose. "No, you're not."

---

After they loaded their supplies onto the runabout and before they got the clearance to head down to the surface, the seventeen field-trained physicians watched the battle from the viewscreens of the runabout while planning their setup. "They're like mosquitoes around a vat of bloodwine," Dr. Paris muttered, watching the tactical display of the fliers around the larger Nygleian ships. "How many do we have out there?"

"A thousand," Dr. Stanford, one of the junior flight surgeons, replied. He grinned over at her. "Lots of bloodwine at your house growing up, Paris?"

"Only after a particularly honorable killing," she replied sweetly. "It looks like we're doing well."

"It's not as if the phasers on the fliers are any less effective just because they're coming from a smaller ship," Dr. Jackson said absently, studying the planetary display. He tapped the monitor. "Most of the fire seems to be concentrated here, in this urban area of the southwestern continent. That's where we'll send the largest group. There's a stadium that will serve as a good site for a field hospital. Paris, Kellogg, and Salvon, you're with me. Right now, I'm looking at five other sites." He pointed out the tentative sites on the display, assigning physicians to each.

"Our fliers are pushing the Nygleians away from the planet," Stanford said, pointing at the tactical display. It seemed to be centimeter by centimeter, but the Nygleians were slowly moving further away from Zeva V, their photon charges to the surface not impacting as often. It looked like the part of the battle involving the planet would soon be coming to a close.

_*Kirk_ to the _Nile_. You are cleared for takeoff.*

"That's our cue," Jackson said. He turned in his seat toward the pilot. "Get us down there, Ensign."

---

Lt. Marjorie Shin glanced over at the figure hunched over the short coffee table in the engineering lounge, a PADD in his hand and an empty mug of coffee in front of him. Quietly, she crossed over to the replicator, then over to his couch, coffee in one hand and tea in the other.

"You look like hell," she said bluntly, handing over the mug of coffee. Lt. Nenyaht looked up in surprise, his hazel eyes bloodshot and out of focus.

"Thanks," he said sarcastically. He looked at the coffee and sighed. "I'm not sure more caffeine is the answer, though. I've probably had enough to power the warp core. That's what I get for trying to operate on two hours of sleep. I was never all that great at all-nighters."

"Two hours?" she asked, her eyebrows raised. "What did you do after leaving the bar?"

"Went to bed," he said with a laugh. "Then Abbey broke into my room and woke me up to take a look at her replicator. Her brother reprogrammed it before the _Kirk_ left dock." He laughed bitterly, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. He finally reached for the mug, using the motion to mask him kicking himself after that last comment. He should know better than to talk about one girl with another, no matter what the history with either. "And then we went to red alert, and I've been locked down in deflector controls since. I need to figure out a way to allow us to fly at maximum warp under cloak without burning out the deflector dish."

"I won't even pretend to have any ideas to help you with that," she commented, leaning back in her chair as she brought her mug to her upturned lips. Her slate-colored eyes narrowed slightly as she studied the other engineer, his broad shoulders still slumped forward as he studied the PADD in his hands, his olive-colored skin looking a bit more sallow than it had the night before. "I still cannot believe Admiral Janeway is your godmother," she commented.

He looked up, flashing a quick grin before his eyes returned to his work. "It comes with the territory," he said. She frowned at his words.

"What territory?" she asked.

"You know, my parents."

"Aren't they professors? There are quite a few children of Academy professors who have no connection to Starfleet admirals."

He chuckled. "Their _pre_-professorial identities," he said. She gave him a blank look, and he almost choked on his coffee in surprise. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No," she confessed with a small laugh. "Should I?"

"Janeway, Chakotay, Seven of Nine, Kim, Paris, Torres," he hinted, using the names from the stories they had told the night before. She just shook her head apologetically. "Spirits, didn't they teach anything about Starfleet during Federation history in your secondary school?"

"No," she said bluntly. "Starfleet service was not exactly an emphasis on my colony. As far as I know, I am the first from New Devonshire to join Starfleet."

He shook his head slightly. "I can't believe it. This could be the first time my entire life that this has happened to me." The doors to the lounge slid open, revealing the propulsion chief. "Commander El-Lachem," he said with a nod. "Stop me when you know what these people have in common. Janeway, Chakotay—"

"_U.S.S. Voyager_," El-Lachem said with a dismissive wave. "If you would like, Lt. Nenyaht, we could discuss the advances in the field of propulsion engineering that came from your parents' ship at some other point. In the meantime, I was wondering if you had a chance to run a diagnostic on the navigational deflector assembly."

"I ran a level four diagnostic, but it didn't include the force beam generator junctions. Nothing came up with that. Since we're not moving now, I took the whole system off-line to run a level one diagnostic. It should be done in about twenty minutes, and then I'll take a look at the results. I'll let you know what I find."

The small swarthy man nodded and half-turned toward the replicator before turning back. "Since you brought up _Voyager_, Lieutenant, I meant to ask you earlier if you happened to have access to the data from the latest transwarp experiments that Seven of Nine and Captain Torres have been running."

"I don't personally, but I can ask B'Elanna or my mother to include you in the updates."

"I would appreciate that, Lieutenant, thank you." El-Lachem nodded his head deeply before replicating a mug of tea and leaving the lounge.

"So what was so special about this _Voyager_ that apparently everyone you knew was on?" Shin asked, returning to their earlier conversation.

Nenyaht shook his head slowly in wonder. "I can't believe you haven't heard about this. In 2371, _Voyager_ was sent out to capture a Maquis cruiser, and both ships ended up transported to the far side of the Delta quadrant, seventy thousand light years from Federation space. The two crews combined for what they thought would be a seventy year journey back home, but through their innovation and what sounds like quite a lot of luck, they made it back in seven, making first contact with more peoples than any other crew in Starfleet history and defeating the Borg in the process. Didn't you tour the museum while you were at the Academy?"

"I went to the Academy at Psi Upsilon III for their biomedical engineering program," Shin explained. He seemed to remember that that particular satellite campus had one of the best BME programs in the Federation. "I've only been to Earth once in my life, for a BME conference on the San Francisco campus my plebe year."

As soon as she said those words, Nenyaht had a flash of memory, slate-blue eyes under a mop of platinum-blond curls, light brown skin flushing bright red in embarrassment as he entered his room early in the morning after returning from a parrises squares tournament. He blinked in surprise, wondering if the dark-haired engineer in front of him now could be that same girl Martin Coby had taken back to his dorm room years before. Before he could open his mouth and say anything, his PADD chirped, indicating that decks below, his diagnostic was complete. "I gotta go," he said instead, leaving Shin staring after him, a look on confusion on her face.


	17. Chapter 17

_Alpha quadrant  
__Zeva system  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

"Dr. Paris," Dr. Rex Jackson said with a nod as he walked by, headed for the supply crates in the emergency field hospital the team had erected upon landing hours before. "How are you doing?"

"I've had better days," Dr. Abbey Paris admitted, running the osteoregenerator over the leg of a small Zevian boy.

Dr. Jackson watched silently as she worked for a minute before speaking again. "What's your MOT?" he asked, referring to the maximum operational time, the number of hours a physician could work, taking only short meal and bathroom breaks, before losing the ability to make good medical decisions and provide effective treatment. Working beyond an individual's MOT put patients at risk; if caught, a physician could have his or her license suspended. Every five years, Starfleet physicians had to report to Starfleet Medical for MOT testing to maintain their certifications.

"Twenty-eight hours," she reported, smiling down at the young boy before moving on to the next patient. A few cots down, Dr. Alex Kellogg gave a low whistle.

"Must be nice to be young," he commented. "Mine's eighteen. I have MOT testing next year, they'll probably decrease it again. What's yours, boss?"

"Fifteen," Dr. Jackson admitted. "Mine was never anywhere near twenty-eight."

"Klingons don't need as much sleep as humans," Dr. Paris said. "We had a Vulcan in my class. Her MOT was seventy-three hours. Would be nice to have her here now."

"We had a Tyrellian in my class," Dr. Kellogg offered. "His MOT was seven and a half hours. I'm glad _he's_ not here."

Paris chuckled. "What kind of field do you go into if you can't even work eight hours before risking killing a patient?"

"Psychiatry," Kellogg replied, moving on to another patient. "At least, that's what Werin went into. He could see three patients for an hour each, take three hours off, work another three hours, take another three off, for days in a row. In times of crisis, he'd work for seven hours and take four off. Doesn't sound like a bad system, actually."

"Not for me," Paris declared. "I'd much rather be doing this. I don't think I'd make much of a psychiatrist." Kellogg smiled widely at her words. Paris guessed he was imagining a part-Klingon psychiatrist and how that would go, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Regardless of how much you're enjoying this, Dr. Paris, don't over do it. I know you can work effectively for twenty-eight hours, but try to keep it below twenty-four. We don't know how long we're going to be down here, and I don't want you burning out," Jackson said.

She nodded, knowing better than to argue. "Sure," she replied. She smiled thinly at him before moving on to the next patient, a Zevian male who looked like he would have been in his early to mid twenties had he been human, making him around sixteen or seventeen in Federation Standard years. "Hi," she said with a smile, scanning him with a tricorder. "I'm Dr. Abbey Paris from the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_. What's your name?"

"Anuj Saime Peretal," he said weakly, grimacing and holding his side in pain.

"So you're from here," she said conversationally, focusing her exam over his abdomen.

"You're familiar with Zevian names," he said appreciatively.

She smiled and nodded, loading her hypospray with a local anesthetic. "My first roommate at the Academy was Zevian. Ezera Isquis Taru."

"Taru is on the northern continent," Saime said. "That's a long way from here. I have never been, but I've heard it's beautiful." He said it with a note of hopefulness, as if trying to please her with his knowledge of the region her roommate hailed from. Paris remembered that, likely related to their different brain anatomy, Zevians seemed to have an almost child-like need for acceptance. When she first met Ezera, she confused that willingness to please for lower intelligence, which was far from the truth. She, like many Zevians, had a nearly eidetic memory, remembering almost everything she had read or been told; she just didn't always think well for herself.

"She used to talk about the waterfalls in the mountains," Paris commented, still scanning his abdomen. "She said they're the most beautiful pink in the summer." She grinned, remembering what might have been the only good conversation she had with her freshman roommate. "Most people on Earth don't understand Zevian names. She was called Cadet Taru more often than not in the beginning. Almost a year went by before her official file was changed to reflect that Isquis was her family name."

Saime nodded, his purple eyes finally clearing as the pain eased. "There aren't many Zevians in Starfleet. I can understand why they were confused. What is she doing now?"

Paris paused, the hands holding medical equipment stilled over his abdomen. "She died during the Nygleian attacks on Earth," she said quietly.

"I'm sorry," Saime said. "Were you friends?"

"We were roommates and teammates," Paris said. "But I wouldn't say that we were friends." Her work on his abdomen complete, she decided it was time for one of her quick meal breaks, grabbing a ration bar from the supply container and pulling up a chair next to Saime's cot.

"Teammates? What sport did you play?"

"It's an Earth sports, gymnastics. Have you heard of it?" Saime shook his head. "It involves aerobatics—flips and twists on various pieces of equipment. It helps to be small, but you also have to be strong and flexible. Ezera was good. I underestimated her at first, but Zevian physiology proved me wrong."

He nodded. "We may not be as tall as many other species, but Zevians are highly agile. We're stronger than we look. I'm not surprised your teammate excelled at the sport. Athletics are an important part of our culture. I may not know much about your gymnastics," he said apologetically, "but I have played several sports throughout my life. There was a Vajhaq game here at this stadium, the collegiate championships. I'm a forward on my team. At least, I was. I don't suppose there's enough left of my team to compete again." He sighed deeply, a sad expression on his small face. "My fiancée was watching the game. Her brother was on the opposing team. We had laughed about which team she would cheer for. She said she would cheer for both." He smiled slightly at the memory before turning to Paris. "Is there any way of finding her, or at least, finding if she is still alive? Savin Colbee Peretal?"

Paris took a deep breath to try to compose herself before standing. "I'll go look into it," she said, forcing what she hoped resembled a smile. Before he had the chance to notice the change, she excused herself, moving quickly away from his cot.

"Hey, Paris, do you have a minute?" Dr. Salvon asked, seeing the petite physician move hastily away. Paris raised her hand slightly, her index finger extended, indicating that she needed a minute.

There was a small area to the side of the emergency field hospital that was all but deserted. Abbey stood there, leaning against the building, the knuckle of her thumb between her clenched teeth, her breath coming in shaky gasps. "Kahless," she breathed, sliding down the wall until she was crouched on the ground, hot tears escaping from tightly closed eyes, her body wracked in silent sobs.

After a few minutes, she took a couple of deep breaths and opened her eyes, focusing on the skyline just outside the stadium. She wiped her cheeks dry with the heels of her hands and stood. "Enough of that," she whispered. "You're a doctor, a Starfleet officer. Start acting like one."


	18. Chapter 18

_Zeva system  
_Fighter Kirk-0369

Ensign Andrew Riker frowned in concentration as he briefly studied his tactical display, one eye on the almost cartoon-like graphics on his right viewscreen, the other on the real-life image on the left viewscreen. "Riker to Strong," he said, opening a comm link to his flight leader. "I think I can get in close enough to take out their targeting sensors."

*You think, or you know?* Lt. Strong shot back.

Riker again studied the tactical display, calling upon all his training to predict the movements of the fighters and Nygleian ships. "I know," he replied confidently.

There was a pause on the other end as Strong considered the ensign's words and studied his own tactical displays. The deployment of the _Kirk_ caused a complete shuffle in the OFA, with the newly-formed _Kirk_ fighter wing made up of groups from stations around the Federation. Each group was made up of several smaller squadrons, each squadron consisting of three or four flights of six to eight fighters. Although 7th Squadron recently came from Lya Station Alpha, Riker himself was just out of Advanced Fighter Training on Mars Station. Not only was he new to Beta Flight, 7th Squadron, he was new to the type of flying and type of combat Strong and many others in the flight had been performing for three or four years. To say that Strong didn't yet trust Riker's judgment at the helm would be putting it mildly. *Okay,* Strong finally replied. *Let's go for it. Hamilton, Ott, Ponnappa, cover him. Riker, do you know the Yosting formation?*

"Know it?" Riker scoffed with a grin. "I trained at Mars Station, remember? Yosting's wife was my AFT instructor."

*We'll have to swap stories of Paris' training regime when we get back to the _Kirk_,* Strong commented. *In the meantime, I'll create an opening. On my signal, go for it.*

"Aye." Ensign Riker watched the tactical display closely, waiting for Lt. Strong to make his move. A few seconds later, he saw the green dot representing Strong's fighter break formation, shooting a series of phaser blasts along the hull of the Nygleian ship.

*Now, Riker!* Strong commanded, his small ship expertly dodging the Nygleian blasts. Riker slid his hand up the accelerator controls, instantly shooting to full impulse. He quickly checked his side viewscreen, seeing Hamilton, Ott, and Ponnappa in perfect position for the Yosting formation.

"This is going to be fun," he muttered before sending his fighter into a barrel roll. As if sensing that he was up to something, the Nygleian ship turned its fire from Strong to Riker. He managed to avoid most of it, but a few shots hit his shields, shaking his small ship violently. Undeterred by the disruptions, he continued the spins and turns, hearing the voice of Lt. Commander Miral Paris talking him through the steps of the Yosting formation as he flew.

"Target in sight," he said into the comm link, his right hand working the targeting controls. Before he could fire, his ship shook from the impact of the Nygleian phasers. He heard the hissing sound of a blown conduit somewhere behind his seat, followed closely by the warning klaxons, which he ignored. "I lost the target," he said. "Reacquiring." While his right hand was still working the targeting controls, he slid his left hand down the accelerator controls, slowing the fighter to a near-stop to allow him to make a quick turn and get back on top of the Nygleian sensors. Before he had the opportunity to turn, however, he was pushed forward so brutally his neck snapped forward, his forehead impacting his console.

*Warning. Inertial dampers are off-line,* the emotionless, disembodied voice of the computer could be heard over the klaxons.

"Now you tell me," he muttered groggily, shaking his head slightly and blinking, trying to get his double vision to realign. Sliding back into his chair, he pressed the controls for the harness, relieved to find that it was still functioning properly as it snapped together, pining his body to his seat.

*You still with us, Riker?* Ensign Ott asked, concern in her voice.

"That's debatable," he muttered darkly in reply. Remembering what he was doing, his hands danced over the flight controls, sending his ship into a tight turn. Now strapped to the pilot's seat, he didn't move, but felt the pull of the G-forces as the ship almost spun on its axis. He wondered idly if that was what it used to feel like to pilot the airplanes he learned about in his Aviation History course at the Academy. "Let's try this again," he said, his right hand moving back to the targeting controls. "Reacquiring the target."

*Take the shot as soon as you have it,* Strong ordered.

"Aye," Riker replied. "Firing phasers." His right hand hit the phaser controls as his left continued to turn his fighter, trying to move himself into position for a second hit if necessary.

*You got it,* Ott reported. *They're firing blind.*

Sure enough, the phaser blasts from the larger Nygleian ship seemed to be coming randomly, firing where fighters had been seconds before as the weapons controller was trying to shoot using only visuals. Although untargeted phaser blasts weren't as likely to hit anything as those with functioning targeting sensors, the blasts themselves didn't do any less damage, as Riker learned firsthand a few seconds later. "I'm hit!" he exclaimed, feeling the pull of the uncontrolled spin the shot sent him into. "They took out my starboard nacelle."

*Can you get back to the _Kirk_?* Strong asked. Still fighting to control his ship, Riker barely managed to glance at the tactical display.

"Negative," he replied. "There's too much traffic between us and the ship. I'm likely to run into something."

*There's an emergency landing site on the planet,* Strong said. *I'm sending you the coordinates now. There's a maintenance team on-site for your fighter, and the flight surgeons have set up a field hospital a couple of city blocks away. Get yourself checked out while they're working on your ship. Hopefully this thing will be over before your repairs are complete.*

"Aye, sir. I'll see you back on the _Kirk_." Riker opened the coordinates from Strong and attempted to enter them into autopilot. He remembered when he heard the chirping of the error message that ships couldn't fly on autopilot with only one nacelle. "Just what I needed," he muttered darkly. Flying manually and making minute course corrections weren't anything new to him, after three years of Nova Squadron at the Academy and four months of Advanced Fighter Training on Mars, but his head was still pounding from its impact with the console, his eyes requiring more work than usual to stay focused on the controls and viewscreens.

He didn't know if the sluggishness of the shuttle was from the damage to the starboard nacelle, his internal dampers, or his brain, but whatever the cause, it made for one of the worst flights he had ever flown. When he landed, he couldn't even manage to power down his fighter before he stumbled out and threw up on the grassy field of the landing site. "Hey!" one of the maintenance officers shouted at him, running toward the fighter. "What do you think you're doing? You trying to kill us?" He stopped when he saw Riker bent over, still gagging. "Whoa, Ensign, you okay?"

"Yeah," Riker croaked. "Internal dampers went out. Guess my stomach couldn't handle it." He straightened, only to lose his balance and collapse against the side of his shuttle.

"We're getting you to the doctors," the maintenance lieutenant declared. He tapped his combadge. "Medical emergency in the landing site. We need a medical team _now_."

Riker tried shaking his head, only to see his vision tunneling in response. "I'm fine," he protested weakly, sliding down the side of his ship. He vaguely heard the lieutenant's reassurances that everything would be okay as he lapsed into unconsciousness.


	19. Chapter 19

_Zeva system  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

Lt. Nenyaht rubbed his eyes warily before opening them, hoping that in those few seconds, the answers to all of his problems with the deflector would be answered.

No such luck.

He sighed heavily in defeat, contemplating running another diagnostic, even though he knew the results would be the same as all the others: everything was running within normal limits. The deflector was working exactly as it was designed to. _That_ was his problem: deflectors weren't as efficient as the people working in research and development labs liked to think they were.

"The computer told me I'd find you here," a rich, gravelly voice said from the doorway. Although he knew exactly whose voice that was, he turned his head toward her.

"It's usually right about such things," he said, a small smile on his face and in his voice. "What brings you to deflector controls, Kathryn?"

"Well, to see you, of course," she said, as if such an answer were expected and obvious. "I think the better question is, why are you still here?"

He gestured toward the controls around the small room. "This is my domain. I'm stationed here."

"I know that," she said impatiently. "But why are you _still_ here?"

He sighed. "The ship doesn't fly as well under a cloak as it should. I was hoping to figure out why. So far, everything looks normal."

She nodded, moving forward to study one of the displays. "I wish I had a suggestion, but Starfleet's knowledge of deflector controls far surpassed my own when your mother started working for Research and Development. At least on _Voyager_, they were limited by our equipment, so I could still pretend to be able to contribute some knowledge." He grinned, but didn't say anything. She turned to face him. "You missed breakfast this morning."

He grimaced; in the heat of the moment with the Nygleian armada, he had forgotten about their plans. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I was locked up down here."

Her grin widened, her eyes twinkling. "And I was locked upstairs in a briefing, Nenyaht. I'm just joking. If you can tear yourself away from the deflector controls for a little while, though, we can go up to the Officer's Mess and get something now."

"Sure," he said, entering his codes to lock his workstation. "What meal is it, anyway? I've completely lost track of time."

Admiral Janeway only shrugged in reply. "I honestly don't know," she said as they headed out into the corridor.

In the end, neither bothered to check a chronometer to determine what time it was or what meal they should be eating; Nenyaht simply decided that he wanted a chicken sandwich, and Janeway requested a bowl of pasta soup from the replicator. "You looked a little uncomfortable when I brought up Abbey last night," Janeway opened, always getting straight to the point. "Is everything okay?"

"As okay as it's been for the last six years," he said with a sigh. "Actually, last night, after she got off duty, she came and got me from my quarters. Joe reprogrammed her replicator to have an attitude, and she needed an engineer to come fix it."

"And did you?" Janeway asked, grinning at the thought of Abbey's reaction to being the target of one of her brother's pranks.

"I looked at it," he said, "but you know how good of an engineer Joe is. I can fix it, but it's going to take longer than just a few minutes. I should let her know that I haven't forgotten about her, and that I'll get back to it when this Nygleian crisis is over. Well, when this _current_ Nygleian crisis is over."

"I think she's a little bit too busy to worry about her replicator at the moment," Janeway commented. "She's on the planet with the field medical teams." Nenyaht paused, his sandwich halfway between his plate and his mouth.

"She's down there?" he repeated.

"Yes. I think I heard that she's with Dr. Jackson and a few of the other flight surgeons on the southwestern continent. There's a stadium in the middle of an urban center that they're using for an emergency field hospital."

The chicken sandwich returned to Nenyaht's plate without him taking a bite. "So you're telling me that she was sent down to a _stadium_ to treat _Zevian_ patients after a _Nygleian_ attack," he said, his voice flat with the exception of those emphasized words. Like his mother, his voice became cold when he was angry. "I hope they have a counselor standing by for her when they return to the ship."

Janeway frowned. "I'm sure she'll be able to perform her duties without any problems."

"Oh, I'm sure of that, too," Nenyaht agreed. "And I'm sure when she gets back, she'll tell everyone she's fine and will go on with her life like nothing's happened until she has a major breakdown. It might be a few days, maybe a few weeks or even a couple of months, but it will happen. She isn't always rational about how she expresses her emotions and they have a tendency to get the best of her. _This_ will get the best of her." His voice became hard. "Her first roommate at the Academy was Zevian. They were on the gymnastics team together, and she was one of the five girls on the team who died in the attack—the attack in a _stadium_, the attack that also took her future career, her favorite pastime, her ability to walk, her aunt, her cousin, and her fiancée. Tell me, _Admiral_, if you were in that situation, how would you do?" Without waiting for a reply, he abruptly stood from the table, his chair threatening to topple before he grabbed it and set it straight. He didn't even glance back at her as he stalked from the room, his sandwich forgotten on his plate.


	20. Chapter 20

_Zeva system  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

Ensign Andrew Riker groaned low in his throat as he slowly regained consciousness. The first thing he was aware of was the throbbing pain in his head, followed closely by the sight of a flashing red light directly aimed at his right eye, which was being held open. "What are you doing?" he managed before succumbing to a fit of coughs.

Dr. Abbey Paris returned the tricorder wand to its holder on the back of the instrument. "I'm checking your eyes for signs of brain damage," she replied brusquely, her eyes turned away from him as she considered the instruments on her tray. "In humans, we would check the pupillary responses, but Betazoids don't have pupillary responses, so we have to improvise."

"Why are you so mad at me?" he asked, his expression curious. "It's not as if I chose to have Betazoid eyes."

She snorted in response, finally meeting his gaze. "I'm not mad," she answered, sounding no less curt as before.

"Right," he replied dryly. "And I'm not part Betazoid. Although it doesn't take an empath to tell that you're pissed off." He tried to sit up, but the sudden change in position sent his stomach rolling again. Recognizing that he was about to vomit, Paris quickly provided him with a bucket, which he used. "What's wrong with me?" he asked weakly as he lay back again.

"You hit your head," she said matter-of-factly. "You had cerebral contusions in your frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes. There was also quite a lot of bleeding and swelling. We've controlled the bleeding, but it's going to take the swelling a few days to go down completely."

"But why am I sick?" he asked. For the first time, he realized he was lying at an angle. He attempted to sit up again, but Paris' hand stopped him.

"Swelling in your brain causes nausea and vomiting," she replied. "Do you want the whole medical explanation?"

"No, I think I'm good," he declined, closing his eyes briefly. He opened them again to see her scanning him with her tricorder. "You never told me why you're mad. What did I do?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Ensign," she said tersely. "Not everything that happens in this universe is about you."

"Okay," he said slowly. "So why are you mad?"

She gestured widely, indicating the field hospital filled with cots, most occupied by the small blue-skinned Zevians. "You mean this isn't enough?" she snapped. "I have been on this planet for _hours_, performing surgery, checking up on patients, telling people that their loved ones didn't make it. Tell me, what kind of person _wouldn't_ be upset about this?"

To her surprise, he chuckled at this. Thinking that he was laughing at the situation, her face flushed bright red in anger. "No, that's not it," he said quickly, holding his hands out defensively. "I was just thinking about how much like your sister you are." She stared at him blankly. "I trained under her at Mars," he explained.

"Well, that explains it," she snorted, rolling her blue eyes. "Only Miral could teach that particular brand of recklessness."

"Reckless?" he retorted. "My flying is brilliant, intuitive, it's dangerous, but it is _not_ reckless. I know exactly what I'm doing at the helm."

"Really?" she said, her eyebrows raised. "Because Lt. Rajano told me about your shuttle." She picked up a PADD and hit a few keys. She glanced at him quickly before her eyes returned to the small screen. "'_Kirk-0369_ arrived on Zeva V damaged from battle. The starboard nacelle was partially detached from the hull and is inoperable. An impact to the starboard hull in section fifteen-beta disabled several secondary systems, including internal dampers, autopilot, self-destruct, replicator controls—'"

"Those things have replicators?" Riker interrupted. "What's the point in that? Do they think I'm going to stop for a cup of coffee in the middle of a battle?"

She glared at him. "It's so if you crash-land on a planet, you can replicate food and medical equipment in order to survive until help arrives. Anyway, would you like me to continue? The damage assessment is more than two pages long."

"Did they fix it?"

"Did they—You flew, and landed, a _barely_ functional single-pilot fighter through a battle, through the atmosphere, with contusions, cerebral edema, uncal herniation, diffuse axonal injury, and hairline fractures of C1 through C6, and you're worried about your _fighter_?" In her frustration, she threw the PADD to the ground. Riker watched it slide across the floor until it stopped against the far wall. She took a deep breath and counted to ten, first in Standard, then in Klingon. Her moves stiff with fury, she picked up another PADD and angrily stabbed the controls. "Here," she said, thrusting it to his chest. "Instead of thinking about your fighter, think about this."

"What is it?" he asked, taking the PADD. He swallowed when he saw the display, beginning to understand.

"The one on the left is your brain scan from your flight physical yesterday. The one on the right is from when you came in today."

"But I'm going to be okay?"

"You're going to be fine, Ensign. We've patched you up so you'll be ready to damage yourself again next time." He tried propping himself up on one elbow again, but her hand stopped him. "I said you're _going_ to be fine, Ensign. You still have a lot of swelling in your brain. You're not going anywhere any time soon."

"So I have to just lie here until you tell me I can get up?"

"Pretty much, yes."

He blew a stream of air toward the ceiling in frustration. "Well, at least I'll get some sleep."

Her eyebrows rose. "Sleep? I don't think so, Ensign. You're concussed." She waved a medic over. "For the next four hours, Crewman Gimmel's sole job is to make sure you don't get up and don't fall asleep. Then one of us docs will come by and check you over." She gave quick instructions to Crewman Gimmel to keep him awake and in reverse Trendelenburg position before she turned to check on her patients.

"Are you coming back?" Riker called out as she walked away.

She paused and turned back to look at him before rolling her eyes and turning away. "Not if I can help it," she muttered.


	21. Chapter 21

_Zeva system  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

Captain Harry Kim didn't know how long he had been tossing and turning in bed, but he was getting tired of it. Feeling frustrated, he threw off the covers and called for the lights.

He pulled a uniform from his closet and fumbled with the fastenings as he ordered coffee from the replicator. Insomnia was nothing new to him; he took his first station command seven years before, and often found sleep to be evasive during tense situations. Navi used to tease him about it, saying that inability to sleep was a sign of an unsettled mind. Of course, she also had an MOT of fifty-three hours; when she was faced with a tense situation, she just locked herself in sickbay and absorbed herself in her work until it was over. At times, he would have done anything for that ability.

Then, as in now, his preferred method of calming himself was a long walk through his station—his _ship_, now—making sure that everything was functioning as it should be and just basically trying to stay out of the way. As often as not in his days on Deep Space Four, Christopher would join him, father and son walking the decks of the station, talking about school, work, music, or whatever else crossed their minds. Those walks were the only good thing to come from his inability to fall asleep. As Christopher got older, Kim used to complain to Navi that he had no idea what he was going to do when their son left for prep school on Earth. As it turned out, he shouldn't have worried; Christopher died less than six months before he was scheduled to start the ninth grade.

He pushed that negative thought from his mind and focused on his ship as he stepped out into the corridor, his coffee still in hand. He headed for the turbolift, debating where to go first. He quickly decided against the bridge; everyone tended to get a little skittish when the captain was on the bridge when he didn't have to be. He remembered his nights commanding the gamma shift on _Voyager_ and how nervous he always got when Captain Janeway came onto the bridge or into her ready room during _her_ insomniac wanderings. Engineering was another high-power section of the ship to visit, but he just as quickly eliminated visiting that particular region of the ship. Engineers tended to get confused when their captain paid them a visit.

Instead of any potentially busy area of the ship, Kim decided that his first stop should be the Officer's Mess. On every ship or station, it was always somebody's night, and always somebody's day—bars and mess halls had as little respect for the artificial Federation Standard chronometers as enemy attacks. If he wanted to get a feel for the atmosphere of the ship, the best place wasn't where people were working, but where they were relaxing.

He stepped off the turbolift and headed toward the Officer's Mess, but before he arrived, he was intercepted by a woman headed in the opposite direction. Admiral Kathryn Janeway smiled thinly at her former Ops officer as she changed directions to walk with him. "Insomnia," she said knowingly. "It's a captain's curse. There's too much to worry about, so you drink too much coffee to stay awake while working on what you're worried about. Then you can't sleep from the worry and caffeine, which makes you worry more, and drink more caffeine. It never really ends."

He smiled back at her; that pretty much summed it up. "So why are you still awake, Admiral? You're not a captain anymore."

"Just because I don't command a ship anymore doesn't mean I don't still worry," she replied. She took a sip from her own mug of coffee. "After all, we are in the midst of a battle."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" he asked incredulously, taking in her relaxed manner.

She smiled and shrugged a shoulder. "I don't get out much anymore. Don't let them put you behind a desk, Harry. You'll always regret it."

He snorted. "And when was the last time you were actually _at_ your desk?" She only smiled and shrugged in reply. "So what is worrying you?"

"My godson stormed away from dinner after a fight last night."

"So?" he asked with a shrug. "That would be normal for a dinner with my godchildren."

"Abbey and Joe were raised by Tom and B'Elanna," Janeway pointed out. "Nenyaht was raised by Chakotay and Seven. There's a difference."

"Is there?" Kim asked. "Abbey spent more time with me and Navi whenever we were on Earth than with her own parents, and took piano lessons from Seven for hours a week for fifteen years. Nenyaht was always around one Paris or another and avoided his own parents whenever possible. Sometimes I don't know who raised who."

Janeway smiled and took another sip of her coffee. "We managed to defeat the Borg and travel thirty thousand light years in a matter of minutes to get home only to spend the rest of our lives around each other." She sounded almost sad about that observation.

Kim cleared his throat slightly. "So what was this fight about?"

"What do you think?" she asked dryly. "It was about Abbey. He's worried about her being down on the planet, thinks it will bring back bad memories about the attack four years ago."

Kim looked down at the table, suddenly uncomfortable. "I wasn't fair to her," he finally said before looking up again. "Not yesterday before she left for the mission and not four years ago. Sometimes I still forget that she's not that little girl who used to come over and play the piano for us and complain that her parents don't understand her. Part of me wants her to still be that girl, because if she is, that means that none of this has happened, that the attacks never happened." He glanced away again. "I didn't visit her while she was in the hospital. I didn't even try. Part of me blamed her for Navi and Christopher's deaths, and I think she knew that—as if it weren't bad enough that she already blamed herself. She's never going to be the same person she was four years ago, and part of that is my fault. I'm going to have to live with that the rest of my life."

"None of us are the same people we were four years ago, Harry," Janeway countered gently. "And I think we're all still trying to figure out who we've become."


	22. Chapter 22

_Zeva system  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

"I brought you a gift," Dr. Alex Kellogg said, holding out a steaming mug.

"Oooh, more raktajino. Thanks," Dr. Abbey Paris replied, reaching for it. She took a sniff and wrinkled her nose.

"Not quite," Kellogg admitted. "Your twenty-four hours are up."

"And you thought I'd actually need warm milk to help me fall asleep?" she asked, rolling her eyes as she set the mug aside. "Can I sign my patients out to you?"

"Sure," he said, following her to the wall console, currently set to display the bed schematics. She tapped on one of the beds, bringing up the patient information.

"Most of my patients have been fairly simple cases—treat 'em and street 'em type of issues. Those are all gone. Of the ones who are still here, most are stable and shouldn't have any problems for the next four hours while I'm sleeping. The nurses and medics are monitoring them. I only have two that I'll need you to actively check up on. This one is Anuj Saime Peretal, seventeen-year-old Zevian male—that would be thirty-seven _dachtel_, in case you were wondering. He came in with an abdominal wound and I patched him up and have given him some anesthetics, but he's still complaining of pain every time the drugs wear off. I've checked his bowel for perforations and everything looks good, so I can't figure out where the pain is coming from. Just keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't decompensate for some reason. The other," she said, again tapping the bed diagram to bring up another patient, "is Ensign Andrew Riker."

"Ah, the one who flew his fighter in while actively bleeding into his brain," Kellogg said with a nod.

"Right. He's not bleeding any more, but his intracranial pressure is still elevated. I checked up on him two hours ago and it had gone down from when he regained consciousness, but it was still higher than I would like him to be, so I've given him another four hours of thirty-degree bed rest while awake. He has a medic looking over him to keep him from getting up or falling asleep. He'll need another check in two hours."

"Anything I should look out for, considering his hybrid status?"

She shook her head. "No, not really, but if starts complaining of telepathic or empathic impressions that make no sense, like saying that the Zevians are trying to read his thoughts or asking you why you're happy the Nygleians attacked, that's a pretty ominous sign. I would be considering surgery at that point."

"Let's hope that doesn't happen," Kellogg replied. "I haven't done neurosurgery since med school. Do you want me to wake you if anything happens with any of your patients?"

"No," she said firmly. "If you wake me up, I won't be able to fall back asleep, it's just this weird thing about me. It'll mess up my MOT. Don't worry, I trust you."

"Thanks," he said with a sarcastic smile. "Go get some sleep, I'll try not to kill anybody." She flashed him a tired grin before turning toward the doctor's tent. "Hey, Paris," he added. "I just wanted to say, you've done a good job over the last twenty-four hours. I would never guess that you just graduated from medical school. You really know your stuff."

"Thanks," she said. She gave him another weak smile. "I'll see you in four hours, Kellogg." He gave her a brisk nod before turning toward the patient board, getting himself ready for another eighteen hours of surgery and patient management.

---

Four hours after falling asleep, Dr. Abbey Paris woke to the beeping of the alarm on her tricorder. Instantly awake, she swung her feet to the ground as she reached for the instrument, opening and closing it quickly to stop the sound. She sighed deeply as she rubbed her eyes tiredly; although her MOT testing showed that she could work for twenty-eight hours straight, recover for four hours, and work another twenty-eight, for as long as necessary, she was already feeling drained after only twenty-four hours of work. She knew Dr. Jackson would give her a few more hours of recovery if she asked, but she also knew that now that she was awake, there would be no going back to sleep. Resigning herself to working another twenty-four hour shift, she pulled herself to her feet and made her way to the sonic shower. She knew that it only took a couple of minutes for the sonic pulses to remove the layer of grime she felt from the previous day's work, but after the cycle was complete, she called for a few more minutes, rolling her head forward to let the vibrations pounded into her shoulders, relaxing any remaining tension from her body.

Stepping out of the shower, she shivered slightly as the cooler air hit her skin. She had tossed her uniform into the refresher when she arrived in the tent four hours before, and quickly grabbed it and pulled it on, wishing, not for the first time, that the long-sleeved black thermal undershirt she wore under her teal uniform shirt was thicker and warmer. With the cooler temperatures in Peretal, she wondered briefly it was getting close to winter, before she remembered that the planet only had a slight axial tilt and therefore didn't have seasons; it was always this cool. She shivered again at the thought of permanently living somewhere that didn't even have a true summer. If she had her way, she'd live somewhere that _only_ had summer.

After checking that both of her gold pips were in place over her right collarbone and that her combadge was affixed on the left, she ran a brush through her thick blond hair and quickly braided it, one long plait hanging down her back before she gathered the tail into a bun at the nape of her neck. Finally, she grabbed the field boots from where she placed them at the foot of the bed and pulled them on before tightening the fastenings.

She ordered a mug of hot raktajino from the replicator before stepping out of the tent toward the hospital. She blinked at the bright midday's sun, trying to calculate what time it was. The Zevian day was thirty hours; it had been mid-afternoon when they landed twenty-eight hours before. By her estimation, she had six to seven hours until sunset; it would rise again less than sixteen hours after that, and she would again be leaving the field hospital to get some sleep in the middle of the day the next day.

"Morning, Paris," Dr. Alex Kellogg said, glancing up from his dermal regeneration of an older, dark blue Zevian. "Or should I say, afternoon."

"Something like that," she replied, taking a sip of the hot Klingon coffee as she studied the patient board. She almost jumped when she glanced toward Ensign Riker's cot and saw it empty. "What happened to Riker?"

"His intracranial pressure was down to seventeen when I check a few hours ago," Kellogg replied. "Still a bit higher than normal, but outside the danger range. He was itching to get out of bed, so I let him up with the promise that he'd tell someone immediately if his head started to hurt. He wandered over to the fighter repair site briefly, but he's mostly been staying around here."

"Okay, good," Paris replied. "What about Saime?"

"Still here, sleeping now. He was again complaining of abdominal pain. I scanned him and couldn't find anything abnormal, so I gave him another dose of the painkillers."

She nodded absently. "I guess I should round on my patients. Thanks again for keeping an eye on them for me."

"Not a problem. You'll be returning the favor in another fourteen hours."

"Lucky me," she said dryly, downloading the patient data from the board to her PADD before beginning rounds. Most of her patients were recovering well, and she ended up discharging many of them, some of which she would have liked to keep an eye on for a few more hours, but space was at a premium, and she knew that they were more likely to get some rest in the quiet of their own homes than the bustle of the emergency field hospital—that is, if they still had homes after the Nygleian attacks.

By the time she made her way back over to where the more critical patients were located, Ensign Andrew Riker was again at his cot, this time sitting up on his own with a wide grin on his face. "You came back to see me," he observed.

"Yes," Paris replied dryly, her good mood from seeing her patients recovering erased by her irritation at the pilot. "It's considered unethical to operate on a patient and then not follow up."

"You didn't follow up a few hours ago," he pointed out.

"It's also unethical to operate for so many hours without a break for sleep. How are you feeling?"

He shrugged. "I've never had brain damage before, so I have nothing to really compare it to, but I feel fine."

"Headaches, blurry vision, nausea, shortness of breath?"

"No, none of those. Just bored."

She snorted. "I don't have a medication to give you for that. I can clear you to get some sleep, though."

"I'm not tired anymore."

"Then I guess you're going to have to be bored. If you don't need anything else, Ensign—"

"Wait," he said as she turned away. "Can't I go back to the ship?"

"I'm not clearing you to fly, and even if I did, you don't have a shuttle, remember? You're going to have to wait for the runabouts, just like the rest of us. The _Kirk_ is outside transporter range, but even if it weren't, there's too much interference in the atmosphere from the Nygleian weapons for a safe beam-out. I'm sorry, Ensign, but you're stuck here with us for the time being." She turned away again, only to have him again stop her.

"I think my head might be hurting a little," he said. "I think you should stay here and run a few more tests and maybe stick around to monitor me."

She rolled her eyes. "I have other patients to see, Ensign."

He gave an exaggerated sigh as he leaned back onto his cot, a mischievous grin on his face. Deciding she didn't want to know what he was thinking, Paris only shook her head slightly and headed over to Anuj Saime Peretal's cot. Like Dr. Kellogg said, he was sleeping, a peaceful look on his dark blue face. She watched him for a moment before glancing at the monitors surrounding his cot, nodding in satisfaction at the readings. His heart rate was a bit fast, but still in the acceptable range.

"Dr. Paris," he said quietly, his purple eyes now open and locked on her. "How am I?"

"I usually ask that first," Paris joked. "Your vital signs are holding steady. How do you feel?"

"I still have pain, but it's not as bad as it was," he said, trying to sound helpful. "I think your painkillers are helping."

"That's what we like to hear," she said with an encouraging smile as she pulled out her tricorder and ran another scan. "Everything looks normal."

He nodded slightly. "I was wondering, Dr. Paris, if you have any news on Savin?"

She checked the patient data on her PADD, then the casualty list. She didn't see Savin Colbee Peretal on either. "I'm sorry, Anuj. We haven't found her yet." On some level, she tried to convince herself that no news was good news, that he could still have hope that she was alive, but she knew that not knowing was worse than knowing, even if that knowledge was that a loved one was dead. When she awoke from her coma four years before, nobody would tell her about Jake, despite her frequent questions. It wasn't until two days later that Joey had finally broken down and told her that her fiancée had died. It killed her to hear that, but at least she knew.

Saime nodded his head and looked away. "I understand."

"We're going to keep looking," Dr. Paris promised. "And I'll let you know as soon as I know anything."

He turned his head back to her and nodded again. "Thank you, Dr. Paris." She continued to watch him with a gnawing feeling of guilt in her chest as he again closed his eyes, his breathing becoming rhythmic as he fell back asleep. She wished she had some news for him, either good or bad, but more than that, she wished he wasn't going through what he was going through. She wished she hadn't gone through it herself.


	23. Chapter 23

_Zeva system  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

Captain Harry Kim watched from his center seat of the bridge as the last of the Nygleian fleet limped away from the smaller Starfleet vessels and the planet they were defending. "Sir, the Nygleians are retreating," the lieutenant at tactical reported.

He nodded in reply. "Keep an eye on them. I don't want any surprises," he ordered. He suppressed a yawn; more than forty hours had gone by since the armada was detected, and he had probably slept for three of those. He glanced behind him at the OFA fighter wing commander. "Captain, I'd like to start calling in the fighters. No use keeping them out there if they're not doing anything."

Captain Lopez nodded in agreement. "We'll bring them in gradually by squadron. Third squadron has been out the longest and was due to come in soon anyway. Assuming our friends don't come back, we should have everyone in after five hours."

"Five hours?" Kim repeated with a frown. "Is it really necessary to keep them out that long?"

"We don't want any surprises. If the Nygleians _do_ come back, we'll already have some pilots ready to attack. Besides, have you ever met a pilot who complained about having to fly?" Kim had to admit that Lopez had a point; he couldn't imagine Tom Paris turning down a chance to play around in those single-pilot fighters without the enemy around.

"Understood," he said. He turned to the operations officer. "What about our teams on the surface? Any word?"

"Dr. Jackson is reporting in every eight hours. At last update, he estimated another hundred hours of surgery."

"One hundred more hours?" Kim repeated with a frown. More than four more days of orbiting Zeva V without anything to do except wait for the medical teams to finish on the surface. "How far behind is this putting us in picking up the Bajorans?"

"Assuming it's only another hundred hours, we'll be nine days behind schedule."

"Not quite how I wanted to start this new working relationship," he muttered. He went over his options in his head, disregarding each as they came up. They couldn't leave the medical teams unprotected on the surface while they left for Bajor. With the risks of the Nygleians returning for whatever they wanted from Zeva V, he wouldn't even consider that, even if the medical team _didn't_ include his niece and goddaughter. They couldn't send another ship for their new ground unit; there weren't any other ships in the area large enough to accommodate six hundred Bajoran soldiers. He sighed in resignation as he rose from his chair. "I'll be in my ready room," he announced, "letting Colonel Jena know that it's going to be even longer than we thought. Commander, you have the bridge."

It was turning into a banner first week of his new command.

_Zeva system  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

Drs. Alex Kellogg and Abbey Paris fell into an easy rhythm of treating patients—splitting the more difficult cases equally, helping each other when necessary, and exchanging light-hearted stories over the patient cots. Even though he graduated from Starfleet Medical almost ten years before her, Paris found that Kellogg knew many of her former professors, having either had them as teachers or worked with them professionally, and he did pretty good impressions. By this time, many of the smaller Starfleet medical teams, as well as some of the nearby Zevian hospitals in various stages of disrepair, began evacuating their more critical and surgically complicated cases to them, as they were the only site with the proper facilities. The stress of the extra patient load was beginning to get to the four Starfleet physicians and their five Zevian counterparts who had joined their ranks, and Paris was relieved to have a little bit of good humor in the mix, as macabre as it may be.

She was in the middle of a detailed story about her first medical rotation aboard a starship when one of the medics burst into the patient area, trying valiantly to catch his breath. "Sirs," he said between gasps. "There's a section of the stadium that collapsed about a hundred meters from here. We just detected life signs in the rubble, but they're buried, and with the interference from the Nygleian weapons, we can't even tell how many are under there. We're working on setting up transport enhancers, so be prepared to receive casualties."

"No!" Dr. Rex Jackson exclaimed, having suddenly appeared behind Dr. Paris' shoulder. "Do _not_ beam them out. We don't know the nature of their injuries; transporting might be fatal. Besides, if your tricorders can't differentiate life signs, I don't think the pattern buffers would be any more successful."

The medic frowned. "But sir, we have to try something. We can't just leave them down there to die."

"So you're telling me there's no way to get to the patients."

"No, sir," he replied forcefully. "We don't know what the structure of the rubble is any further than a meter or two from the top, and from what we can see, the openings are too small for any of us to get through."

"How small?" Paris asked.

"Sir?"

"Are we talking millimeters, centimeters, meters? How small are these openings?"

"There might be a few points with an opening a meter or so in diameter," the medic replied, "but if there are any tunnels down to where the victims are, they're really irregular."

"We have to try," Paris declared. She turned to Dr. Jackson. "Sir, I can go in with a med kit and assess the situation on-site, hopefully stabilize the patients for transport."

"I don't know if you heard me, sir, but we don't even know if tunnels exist. If so, they're too narrow and twisted to traverse."

"With the exception of some of the Zevian patients, I'm the smallest one here," Paris argued. "And narrow and twisted won't be a problem. I was a gymnast once, after all." She turned back to Dr. Jackson. "It's worth a shot. The worst that would happen is that I can't get to them."

"The worst that'll happen is that you get trapped under the rubble and we're out a flight surgeon," Jackson countered.

"I'll be careful," she replied sarcastically. "Let me try, sir. All I need is a med kit and a few people to serve as muscle and help move debris as I direct."

The older physician studied his younger colleague for a moment before nodding his agreement. "Keep the commlink open, and if you get stuck, stop. Don't do anything stupid." He smirked slightly. "Famous last words. The Starfleet flight section isn't all that large. I've worked with more than one Paris in my time. Quite frankly, I'm surprised your father is still alive."

"So are the rest of us," Paris said dryly. She glanced around the hospital and nodded toward the medic lounge. "I'm assuming that would be my muscle?"

"I'll go too." Dr. Paris spun in surprise at the statement to find herself facing Ensign Andrew Riker, leaning casually against a partitioning wall, a faint smirk on his face.

"Absolutely not," she snapped. "I did not spend six hours operating on you to have you playing around a potentially unstable pile of rubble. You need to stay here and rest."

He shrugged. "I feel fine, and I'm completely useless around here, but I can help you out there. Besides," he said, his grin widening, "what better place is there for a patient than right by his doctor?"

"You won't be right by me; I'll be buried under a collapsed stadium trying to get other people out."

"Is he stable?" Dr. Jackson asked.

She frowned. "Well, yes," she admitted.

"Then he goes." When she opened her mouth to protest, he raised a hand to stop her. "He's right, Dr. Paris. We need all the help we can get, and he's not doing anything around here. If sending him to help you move debris keeps a medic around here to help me treat patients, I'm inclined to send him."

She glared at him briefly before turning that toward Riker. "Fine," she snapped, slamming the lid of her med kit shut and heading toward the hospital door. "You better not do anything stupid to hurt yourself."

"Aww, Doc, I didn't know you cared," he joked, jogging a few steps to catch up to her brisk pace.

"I don't," she retorted. "I'd just hate to think that the time I spent repairing your thick skull could have been better spent taking care of someone who has the decency to know when to take care of himself." As frustrated as she was, she didn't turn around, and completely missed his grin.

Arriving at the collapsed section of the stadium, Dr. Paris was able to see what the medic had been talking about. Workers had already been clearing away some of the smaller debris, but there were still larger beams and planks haphazardly arranged under what was once an entire seating area of the stadium. The pile reminded Paris of a game of Pick-Up Sticks, where one wrong move could collapse the entire structure, sending the thin sticks rolling everywhere. "Who's in charge here?" she asked in her loudest, no-nonsense tone.

"That would be me," a man in a gold uniform said, standing from his crouched position a few meters away. "Lt. John Hoskins. I'm with the OFA maintenance team, but I'm a structural engineer by training." Not knowing who she was or what she was doing there, he began to give her an update. "We've managed to place sensor enhancers in the rubble, getting a good diagram of the wreckage and an accurate count of the casualties and their locations. We're working on transport enhancers now. With any luck, we'll be able to beam them out within the hour."

She shook her head. "Bad idea," she informed him. "I'm Dr. Abbey Paris. Until we can assess each patient and make sure that they are medically stable for transport, they're not going anywhere. I'm here to get in there and get people out."

Hoskins shook his head. "I don't think so. It's not exactly stable."

"Neither are they," she retorted, nodding again to the downed structure. "This has already been cleared by Dr. Jackson. I know the risks, but I also know what will happen if we don't get those people out now. What I need from you is that diagram of the pile for me to use as a map and a structural analysis in case anything has to be moved. I also need up-to-date vitals on each of the casualties." Seeing his dubious look, she added, "Don't worry, I'm keeping a commlink open to Dr. Jackson and everyone here."

The engineer studied the slight physician, seeing the determination in her unwavering gaze, and knew that this was not going to be an argument he would win. He sighed in defeat. "Okay, here's what we're going to do." He indicated for her to follow him toward a table loaded with supplies and picked up a gold utility coverall. "This is fitted with tracking devices. It will allow us to follow your progress through the wreckage."

"You're joking, right?" she asked with a frown, holding it up in front of her. It was several centimeters long in the arms and legs and wide enough for two of her to stand in. "You can't even get one my size?"

"That's the smallest we have," Hoskins replied brusquely.

"Oh, come on," she scoffed. "I know I'm short, but I'm not _that_ short."

He raised his eyebrows in reply. "Regardless of how tall you seem to think you are, you're going to have to make do, unless you want us to go back to the maintenance area and replicate one in your size. That should only take an hour."

"Forget it," she said, returning the garment to the table. "Even if it were my size, it's too bulky. I'd never be able to make it through."

"You're not going in without it," Hoskins argued. "Safety protocols. We need to know where you are at all times. As an added bonus to you, it will help us guide you through the tunnels."

"I've got a better idea," she replied, taking several smaller tracking devices, pressing them to her skin behind her ear and on each wrist and ankle. "Head and all four limbs. You should be able to extrapolate positioning from that."

For a few long seconds, neither said anything, their eyes silently challenging each other. Finally, Hoskins conceded and reached for a helmet. "You're not arguing your way out of this one, Doctor."

"I wasn't going to," she replied, slipping it over her blond head and affixing the chin strap. "Brain damage is not on my agenda for this mission. Map?"

"Tricorder," he replied, handing one over.

"Thanks, but I have one," she said, pulling her personal tricorder from her belt. "I just need the map."

He glanced at her tricorder and smirked. "A medical tricorder isn't going to do much good until you get to the patients."

She fixed him with a cold look as she pressed a key on the instrument. She turned it so he could see the standard display. "It's a custom-built tricorder with both medical and standard functions. I have to travel light. I'm not going to be carrying around two tricorders. Can I have the program with the diagram of the wreckage, please?" Her tone was clipped, no-nonsense, inadvertently mimicking the voice B'Elanna Torres used when a subordinate made a mistake.

Hoskins' fair cheeks blushed slightly at the rebuke but didn't say anything as he transferred the schematics of the wreckage from his tricorder to hers. "It's in three dimensions, obviously. You can change the view to any angle with this control," he said, demonstrating on her tricorder. He scanned each of the tracker devices she was wearing and quickly entered it into a program. "This will allow you to see your progress as you go."

"And what about my position in relation to the victims?" He pressed a few more controls before passing the tricorder to her hands. She played with the diagram as he demonstrated for a moment, scanning through the simulated wreckage from different angles before nodding. "Great, thanks. I'm also going to need a Sims beacon and a pair of climbing gloves. Gloves that _fit_."

His cheeks flushed again as he handed her a pair of gloves. "Try these, they're a small. Sims beacons are over there. You also have a light source on your helmet." She nodded, slipping the gloves over her hands and flexing her fingers a few times to assess their fit before nodding her approval and grabbing a Sims beacon for her left wrist.

"Looks like I'm ready to go," she said, tightening the straps on the med kit secured to her back like a backpack. "What's the best way in?"

"I'll let you study the vitals of the victims and the diagram and figure that out for yourself," he replied. He frowned as his combadge chirped.

*L.T., we're ready to move this over here,* the voice said.

"Acknowledged. Be careful," he replied before disconnecting and turning back to Dr. Paris. "Hang tight here for a few minutes. We have teams slowly clearing through the rubble. They're moving a rather large beam away, and I don't want anyone in there until we know it's still stable." He walked away, barking commands to the engineering crew before she had the chance to respond.

"Might as well make myself useful," she muttered, walking over to a small group of Starfleet crewmen in various stages of injury, one medic doing his best to treat them. She saw a young man standing and waiting for the medic's attention, his teal uniform shirt identifying him as a medic himself, his face a grimace of pain as he used his good hand to support an arm at an unnatural angle. "Broken arm, Crewman?" she asked.

"I haven't scanned it, sir, but that's my diagnosis," he replied. She gave him a quick grin as she swung the med kit from her back and pulled out an osteoregenerator.

"Good as new," she declared a moment later. "Well, not quite as new. I want you to take it easy for the new few hours, no heavy lifting."

"Yes, sir," he replied sullenly. An idea suddenly came to her.

"Actually, since you can't clear away rubble, I have a job for you." She waved him over to one of the portable computer displays. "I need you to be my eyes on the patients as I'm moving through the wreckage; I can't monitor my progress and their vital signs at the same time. Right now, the most critical patient is here, and I'm going in from here to get to her first." She tapped the display as she spoke. "I need you to monitor each of them and keep me up to date on their status. If anything bad is going to happen, I want to know about it _before_ it happens. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, his eyes on the display.

"What sickbay are you assigned to?" she asked conversationally.

"Main," he replied. "But after this, I'm thinking about putting in a transfer request to the flight sickbay. You docs are amazing."

"Thanks," she replied with a grin. She nodded toward the display. "You do this for me, I'll personally request that you get that transfer."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, grinning back at her. She patted his arm before returning her instruments to her med kit. He was just a kid, probably only a year or so out of secondary school. He should have been in college, drinking and making bad decisions, not halfway across the Federation helping dig spectators out from under a collapsed stadium. _But then again,_ she mused, _should any of us be here?_

She decided to ponder that thought later as she headed toward the spot she planned on entering the pile of rubble. Pulling out her tricorder, she opened the map of the wreckage and flipped through the various views, trying to get an idea of the path she would take. "You okay?" a soft voice asked from over her shoulder.

She jumped in surprise and spun to face Ensign Riker and paused for a minute at the serious, concerned expression on his face before she reminded herself who she was dealing with. "I'm fine, Ensign," she shot back. "Shouldn't you be helping them make sure everything is stable so I can get started?"

"Actually, we're done," he said. "I came over here to tell you that. Are you sure you're okay? You seem a little…nervous."

She opened her mouth to deny it before remembering that she was speaking to an empath. "Nervous I won't be able to get in, or won't be able to get them out," she admitted. "But there's no use thinking about that yet. Might as well focus on the positive."

"Right," he agreed softly. He paused before adding, "Take care of yourself, Doc."

She snorted in reply as she placed her helmet on her head and again tightened the strap. "You trained under my sister, Ensign. You should know by now that Parises have very active guardian angels."

He grinned. "Actually, I trained under your father as well, while I was at the Academy. Both are either damned talented or damned lucky."

"Or a little of both," she said dryly. She permitted herself a small smile before she was back to business, tapping her combadge. "Open commlink to Dr. Rex Jackson, Lt. John Hoskins, and the engineering command center."

*You about to go in, Paris?* Dr. Jackson immediately asked over the open link.

"If it's okay with Lt. Hoskins," she replied. She could see the engineer standing a few meters away from the supply table, studying the wreckage schematics.

*You're cleared to go,* he finally replied. *Good luck, Doctor.*

"Thanks," she replied dryly. She glanced back at Riker and quickly turned away from his expression, not wanting to give it the time to figure out what it meant. With a deep breath, she placed her hands on a stable-looking beam, leaned in, and took the first step into the wreckage.


	24. Chapter 24

_B'hava'el System  
__Kendra Province, Bajor_

Captain Bhan Larina stepped off the transport and blinked in the bright light of the Bajoran sun. _It always seems brighter in Kendra Province_, she mused, adjusting the strap of her duffle on her shoulder as she took the first few steps away from the platform. A few meters away, she paused, not sure she should continue by foot or call for ground transportation. Deciding that she was in no hurry and it was a nice day for a walk, even a walk this distance—_a few kilometers_, she thought, forcing herself to think in Federation Standard measurements—she continued on foot.

She always liked Kendra Province this time of year, with the kava plants in full bloom, the light breeze blowing their full scent into her face, so unlike the mountainous region surrounding Tempasa in the Dahkur Province, which even after the soil reclamators had been deployed following the Cardassian departure, could grow little more than wheat. As someone accustomed to the warmer temperatures of Kendra, Bhan had taken the move to the more temperate Tempasa harder than most of her comrades, but if there was one lesson she learned early in life, it was how to adapt.

"Larina! Bhan Larina!" a voice called out, interrupting her thoughts and stopping her in her tracks. She squinted against the sun and smiled when she saw who it was.

"Ranjen Jakor," she greeted with a nod as he caught up to her on the road. She slowed her pace to match that of the older priest. "How have you been?"

"Aren't I supposed to be the one to ask that?" he asked with a laugh and earning a smile in reply. He had been the local cleric since before Bhan was born, giving sermons and advising the local farmers and villagers for more than thirty years. There were periods in her teenage years when she sought his counsel on a daily basis, craving the stability that the spiritual life offered. Now an adult, she no longer considered herself to be religious, but still occasionally called upon her childhood ranjen for advice. "I didn't expect to run into you on the road back from the market."

"My company's leave was extended, so I found myself with more time off than anticipated," she explained. There was a pause before she quietly asked, "Is the general around?"

"I would assume so," Jakor replied. "He was at the temple this morning to offer his daily prayer of remembrance and stayed for the early service. I haven't seen him since, but he didn't mention going anywhere. He has always asked me to perform a plea for protection whenever he leaves Bajor. You didn't tell him you were coming?"

"I told him that I had extra leave and plans to visit the estate, but I didn't give him a specific time of arrival or any set agenda. We don't always operate on the same schedule."

"That must be difficult, to be in the same organization and working so separate from each other."

She shrugged. "I don't know it any other way," she pointed out. He nodded in agreement, but didn't say anything. They continued to walk in companionable silence along the path through the kava fields. After they crossed over a white-wood bridge spanning a familiar creek, they entered a small wooded area. "This is where our paths diverge, Ranjen," Bhan said.

He smiled knowingly. "I see you still have to do things your own way, Larina."

She grinned back at him, the first true, honest grin she had given anybody in a long time. "Always," she replied. She stepped off the path and into the woods, now following a trail marked only by her memories. It was a shortcut she had found years ago, cutting down the distance from her family's estate to the village center from seven kerrilon to three. _About one kilometer_, she corrected. If she was going to be on a Federation ship, she was going to have to start using their measurements, even though they didn't make any sense to her.

"Halt," she heard a voice command, causing her to freeze in position on a log lying over the winding creek. She glanced up and breathed a sigh of relief to see that the voice came from a tow-headed boy who looked no older than ten years old; still, she berated herself for the lack of concentration on her surroundings and for letting a child get the better of her. "Who goes there? Are you friend, or foe?"

"Friend, I hope," she replied wryly. "My name is Bhan Larina. My father is General Bhan Nentar. He lives about two kerrilon in that direction," she said, pointing. "And you are?"

"Minar Petre," he replied, lowering the stick he was brandishing as a weapon. "My brother Elis and I are the guardians of these woods."

"In that case, I am formally requesting permission to pass through your territory on my journey." She gave a small bow to mark her words. She didn't know the Minar family, but the farms in Kendra Province were all several hecapates in size, the houses spread far from each other and isolated by the large fields.

Petre thought about this for a moment before nodding gravely. "Permission granted," he finally declared. "Just as long as you head straight through on your way home and don't stay too long."

"You have my word, good sir," she said playfully, again bowing before continuing on her journey. She kept the creek in her peripheral vision until she saw two jumja trees unnaturally intertwined, the unexpected result of a last-ditch experiment to save the taller of the plants after a lightening storm more than two decades before. She crossed over to the trees, reflexively murmuring a ritual prayer for the land and touching her fingers to the rough bark as she walked by.

While traversing the shade of the woods, she had forgotten about the brightness of the day's sky, again blinking against the sunlight as she stepped out into a vividly blooming kava field. After her eyes grew accustomed to the extra light, she continued on her journey, carefully walking between rows of kava plants through the field, smiling politely at those working the field, many of them children more interested in running around and playing tag than tending to the plants. She remembered spending lazy summer days in the kava fields, an unspoken game she played with her unwitting father, seeing how many hours she could work with the farm hands before he would notice and call for her to return inside to study. Some days, she didn't even make it out the door before he noticed, but most of the time, he had no idea she had even left the house.

"Larina!" a voice exclaimed, interrupting her thoughts and causing her to spin in surprise. She flushed slightly at the realization that it was now twice in the span of an hour that she had been caught off guard. Squinting against the sun to figure out who called her name, she caught a glimpse of a tall, middle-aged woman on the far side of the field, once-bright red hair now almost entirely gray, a straight and proud posture replaced by one belonging to a woman who spent a good deal of time bent over as she tended to the fields. Yom Quana was looking at her with a bemused expression on her face, knowing that she had surprised, and embarrassed, her former pupil. She waved the Militia officer over, and Bhan obediently went, kissing the schoolteacher on a wrinkled cheek.

"I didn't know you were coming home, Larina," Yom said as Bhan straightened. "It's been so long; I was worried you had forgotten where your home was."

"It hasn't been that long," Bhan protested, even as she knew that it had, indeed, been that long. "My leave was extended and I decided that a few days in Kendra were just what I needed."

"A few days in Kendra would do most your comrades and the rest of the government some good," the older woman replied. She turned behind her and shouted out for her husband. "Mikai! Look who came home!"

Yom Mikai straightened, hopping slightly as he turned toward his wife, his ruddy face breaking into a grin. "Captain Larina!" he called out. "You've come to protect us old farmhands in Kendra Province, hmm?"

She smiled as she crossed the rows to greet him properly. "I don't think any of you need any help from me in that regard," she commented. "You were protecting yourselves and this land long before I was here."

"For all the good that did us," he muttered. "I lost two brothers and a leg in this very valley."

Unwillingly, she glanced down at his poorly-fitted prosthesis. "Why do you still have that old thing, Mikai?" she asked softly. "I can get you a better leg."

He waved that aside, the sorrow on his features the moment before gone. "This 'old thing' has served me just fine for over forty years, Larina. When it gives me pains at the end of the day, I just thank the Prophets that it was only my leg that was lost, and I ask for their continued protection in the Celestial Temple of those who were not so fortunate. I fear that if I didn't have that pain, I would get old and lazy and forget about the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for Bajor. If you do not understand that, ask your father to explain it. He was there that day."

"I understand it well enough," she replied, her voice low.

His features softened. "Yes, I suppose you do. I keep forgetting that you are not so little and sheltered anymore, just as I forget sometimes that there is another war going on out there."

"Sometimes, I wish I could forget."

He wrapped her in a large hug. "I'm sorry, Larina. You should not be listening to the ramblings of an old man musing about another time. For as long as you are here for the next few days, I want you to forget about the war and your responsibilities with the Militia. Can you do that for me?"

She gave a short, sarcastic laugh. "I will try, Mikai, but I will not be making any promises. It has been almost forty years since you returned to Kendra, but you still remember."

"I live here with the pain of my past and the memories of my battles. Your pain doesn't belong here. Millions of Bajorans fought and risked their lives on this planet so that you would not have to live as we did."

"I know," she said. "My father was one of them, and now I fight and risk my life so that someday we will have a generation who doesn't know what it's like to patrol space for any sign of Nygleian activity. Sometimes, Mikai, I'm afraid we haven't made as much progress as we seem to think we have."

"There will always be bad people out there, Larina. All that we can hope is that we will always have good people to stop them. People like you."

She smiled thinly. "On Earth, there lived a philosopher more than six hundred years ago who said, 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'"

"Maybe those humans aren't as primitive as some of our fellow Bajorans like to think they are," Yom said with a playful wink. He and his wife were two of the only people to know that Bhan had applied to, and been rejected from, Starfleet Academy.

"I should hope not," Bhan replied with a sigh. "My next assignment is aboard a Federation vessel."

He raised his eyebrows. "You will have to tell me all about this assignment, but some other time. I'm sure your father is expecting you."

"He's at the house?"

Yom nodded. "He has been since he returned from morning service. According to the farm's gossip, he's been working on a hasperat."

She barely resisted the urge to groan. She loved hasperat, especially the extra-spicy blend her father prepared, but she knew he wouldn't be putting that much effort into it just for her. "He's preparing a dinner party, isn't he?"

"He has a lot to be proud of. His daughter is home."

This time she did snort in disbelief. "Right," she said softly. It seemed for as long as she could remember, she had been working her hardest to earn her father's love and acceptance, and with her recent successes with Kejal Company, it finally looked like that was happening. She only wished he could love and accept the _person_, not just the accomplishments.

Instead of vocalizing those grievances to her father's old friend and former fellow resistance fighter, she only smiled thinly and gave him a quick hug, voicing vague promises to come out in the field and get him caught up on her life and the happenings of the Militia before she headed back for Tempasa. After waving her goodbyes to Quana and the other farmhands she knew, she headed up the path to her childhood home.


	25. Chapter 25

_Zeva System  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

Ensign Andrew Riker grunted from exertion as he and a small group of Starfleet medics and engineers lifted another long beam from the pile of rubble. Stopping to take a breath after they rested the beam in the slightly more organized pile of rubble away from the first, he wiped a line of sweat from his brow, realizing a second too late that all he succeeded in doing was smear the dirt from his gloves all over his face. "We have transport enhancers and transport capability," he finally said. "Why are we still doing this the hard way?"

"Afraid of a little bit of hard work, Ensign?" one of the engineering crewmen teased.

"I'm afraid of pulling a muscle or breaking a bone and hearing another lecture from our flight surgeon," Riker replied with a grin.

*You are aware this is an open comm link, right, Ensign?* the dry voice of Dr. Abbey Paris replied through his combadge. *I couldn't care less about what you do to your muscles, but if anything happens to that head of yours, well, you might as well start asking any deity you might believe in for mercy.*

He chuckled. "Duly warned, Doctor. I'll limit myself to non-head injuring tasks."

*Good idea. And while you're at it, be careful with your hands.*

"My hands?"

The comm line was filled with rustling sounds, probably as Paris maneuvered herself through yet another opening that looked narrower than she was. Finally, she explained, *I grew up around pilots, remember? I know how important manual dexterity is to you people. Crewman Crews, how are our people doing?*

Riker chuckled to himself as he wandered over to the large viewscreen displaying the map of the rubble and the positions of Dr. Paris and the victims within it. He watched her move within the wreckage for a few minutes, fascinated by her ability to snake through the beams, squeezing through openings that looked impossibly small. He had doubted it when she said that she'd be able to get to the casualties, but now he was starting to believe that it was going to happen. He was getting the impression that Dr. Paris tended to succeed at what she set her mind on.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, he was enjoying being on Zeva V. The physical work was hard, certainly much harder than the typical work a Starfleet brat-turned pilot who spent the vast majority of his life on starships was accustomed to, and he found the labor liberating, in a strange way. But more so than the satisfying ache in his muscles, he was enjoying the sarcastic wit of one Dr. Abbey Paris as her voice drifted over the open comm line. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't fascinated by her the moment he first laid eyes on her; he even let three people go before him in line at the flight physicals so he'd have a chance to talk to her. He suspected that she might be a Paris before she introduced herself—there weren't many Klingon hybrids in Starfleet, and the forehead was fairly recognizable. He, like the majority of the male members of his Advanced Fighter Training course, had been infatuated with Lt. Commander Miral Paris; not only was she physically very attractive, but she was tough, no-nonsense, and one of the best pilots who ever lived. There was just something about women who could fly circles around you, beat you half to death with her bare hands, and walk away with a smirk on her face that made men take notice.

Her little sister was different, though. Sure, she had the forehead, but even that didn't look quite the same as Miral's. Commander Paris had faint, gently curving cranial ridges, whereas Dr. Paris' were more pronounced, more geometric, consisting of three sharp V's down to the bridge of her nose connected to straight lines that ran across her forehead and faded into her temples. With her sandy blond hair and deep blue eyes, Riker initially thought Dr. Paris resembled her father, but the more he studied her face—not that that was a task he minded—the more he saw similarities to her older sister. The eyes were the same, as was the challenging smirk behind them, and if he ever saw Abbey smile, he was sure that she would have the same crooked grin as Miral.

Less than five minutes after meeting Dr. Paris, however, Riker saw that she wasn't just a younger, smaller, fairer version of Lt. Commander Paris. With Miral, what you saw was what you got—she held nothing back, not in her flying, not in her thinking, not in her emotions. Abbey was smart, she was passionate, and if his head was any indications, she was pretty damned talented, but it didn't take an empath to tell that there was something else there, something she tried to keep hidden from the world. He was making it his mission to find out what that was, even if it meant hauling away rubble from a collapsed athletic stadium the day after having brain surgery.

"Hey, Riker!" one of the engineering ensigns called out. "Are you planning on joining us, or just staring at that screen all day? I know this is a difficult concept for you pilots, but sometimes it takes actual labor to get things done."

Riker flashed him a grin as he pulled the light-weight gloves back over his hands. "Really? Because I usually just park my ship, and find it magically repaired in a couple of hours." The ensign grinned backed and rolled his eyes as Riker joined them. It was time to get back to work.

---

Dr. Abbey Paris' eyes went from the open tricorder in her hand to the small opening in front of her and back, trying to decide what to do. "I can go through here, over this beam—no, that won't work. That's blocked off. I'll have to go around this, then under this…damn, this is confusing."

*You say something, Paris?* Dr. Rex Jackson asked over the comm line.

"Just talking to myself," she replied lightly. "Crews, how—"

*Same as they were five minutes ago, Doc,* the medic replied automatically. *We have a group working on the south end, trying to get to those patients from the outside.*

"Good," she replied as she balanced herself to slide between two large beams, less than a third of a meter apart. "Because at this rate, I'm not getting to anybody. I've been in here two hours, and I've gone, what, a meter?"

*Two and a half, and you're at least fifteen meters in,* Crews replied. *A little more than five meters to the first casualty.*

"And her vitals are still stable?" Paris asked, pulling out the tricorder again and studying the map with a frown.

*Yes, but that's not saying much. They're stable in the critical range.*

"Great," she muttered, punching a few keys into the instrument before glancing around. She looked up, then back at the tricorder. "Lt. Hoskins, how stable is the beam over my head?"

*It's not about to fall on you, if that's what you're asking,* the engineer replied.

"Actually, it's not," Paris said, raising to a crouched position and tugging on the beam gently to test its position. It didn't move. "Can it handle forty-five kilos of extra weight?"

*What do you have in mind?*

"Just answer the question," she sighed.

*I'm running the numbers. Hold on,* he replied. A minute later, he said, *It should be able to take an extra fifty kilos without any problems.*

"Fifty?" she asked, getting a good grip on the bar with both hands. "Just how heavy do you think I am?" Not having the room to maneuver within the wreckage as she would have liked, she had to lift her body as dead weight using her arms. Her knees held tightly to her chest, she twisted her body over to the top of the metal bar and took a deep breath as she scooted her upper body forward until she was lying flat over it, her shoulder blades brushing against the bottom of another bar, perpendicular to the first. Using only her arms and keeping her head down, she edged her way forward toward her patient.

---

"Shnikies," Ensign Andrew Riker muttered, his eyes on the tricorder display in his hand.

"'Shnikies'?" Crewman Daniel Byington repeated, a look of confusion on his face. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

The pilot shrugged. "Hell if I know. It's some nonsense jazz word I picked up. Did you _see _that?"

"See what?"

Riker hit a few keys on the tricorder, setting the display to a few minutes prior before turning it toward Byington. "How the hell did she do that?"

Byington watched as the stick figure representing Dr. Paris turned and twisted around a bar before sliding along it in a space barely bigger than her. "She was a hot-shot gymnast before going to med school," he commented. "Won some Federation championships, if I remember correctly. She's probably been able to do moves like that since she was five."

"Damn, she's limber," Riker muttered, reversing the recording on the tricorder to watch the move again. "Wonder what else—"

*Open comm link, Ensign,* Paris' voice reminded him. He grinned sheepishly at the realization that she had heard the entire conversation. *Don't make me regret saving your life.*

He laughed slightly and adopted a teasing voice. "Aww, Paris, you don't mean that, do you? I can show you just how little you should be regretting saving my life. How about, after we get back to the ship, I treat you to dinner. A little wine, a little dancing—"

*You're an ass.* She didn't sound angry, just matter-of-fact, as if that was as much of his identity as saying that he was a pilot or a Starfleet officer. *Besides, Ensign, I don't date flyboys.*

"Your sister and father are both pilots," he pointed out.

*I wouldn't date them, either,* she shot back without missing a beat.

*Ensign Riker,* the voice of Lt. John Hoskins interjected. *If you're done flirting with Dr. Paris, can we have the comm link back for official business?*

He grinned. "I suppose, Lieutenant, but only because you asked so nicely." He heard a snort of disbelief from Dr. Paris.

*That's very kind, Ensign,* Hoskins replied dryly. *Now, Dr. Paris, you're only about three meters away from your casualty, but it's not going to be an easy three meters. Things are pretty dense in there.*

*I can tell,* Paris said. Over the comm link, Riker heard what sounded like the beeping of tricorder controls. *I can't seem to find a way in,* she said, her tone frustrated.

*I've been taking a look at this section for awhile now, and the only way I can see is down. About half a meter in front of your position now, there should be an opening in the rubble a little more than half a meter in either dimension going down.*

*I see it,* she replied, her voice muffled by rustling sounds as she moved through the debris. *It's not very deep.*

*It's going to require some maneuvering,* Hoskins admitted. *But I don't see a better way.*

Riker thumbed through the map of the debris on his own tricorder. "Some maneuvering" was a bit of an understatement; he didn't see how it would be possible. He read somewhere that a humanoid body can fit through any opening as wide as the shoulders, but he didn't see any such openings on the diagram.

Apparently, Paris didn't, either. *Is any of this mobile enough to move?* Hoskins went into detailed instructions about which pieces should be moved to create an opening, but Riker stopped listening, his eyes now on the display of the vital signs of the casualties. He didn't know much about medicine, especially Zevian medicine, but from what he had heard from Crewman Crews' updates, they didn't look good. _Come on, Paris_, he silently urged her. _You can do this_. Despite her brusque exterior and take-on-the-universe attitude, he sensed that there was something deep down inside that needed this to work, something that would never allow her to forgive herself if it didn't. There was a level of responsibility there that even he, the quarter-Betazoid son of two very dedicated Starfleet officers, couldn't quite comprehend.


	26. Chapter 26

_Zeva system  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

Reports, reports, reports. There were always more reports for the captain to read and review. Captain Harry Kim eyed the stack of PADDs on his desk and sighed. They were barely into their first mission, and he was already behind on his reports. There were casualty reports, engineering reports, maintenance reports, tactical reports, stellar cartography reports, and reports he couldn't even identify. More as a delaying technique than anything else, he took the time to sort them by importance, then quickly shook his head and reconsidered, arranging them by how quickly he could get through them. The casualty report needed only a thumbprint signature; that was complete. He quickly scanned the maintenance report to see how much longer it would be before the ship was again in perfect condition before pressing his thumb to that PADD as well. There wasn't much he could do to change those numbers. Stellar cartography had nothing new to report; that got a quick thumbprint. He took one glance at the tactical report and set it aside; that one would take more time than he was willing to give.

The engineering report, while something that was more his speed, was _dense_. The engineering department on the _Kirk_ was the largest he had ever seen outside Starfleet Corps of Engineers, with ten separate sections, each of which was included in the report, even the ones that had nothing new to report. Kim made a mental note to talk to Commander Noe about streamlining his reports. He just hoped the Mizarian handled the criticism well.

He quickly skimmed through the non-essential sections—he wasn't terribly surprised that biomedical engineering had nothing new to report, as they haven't even begun their experiments yet—before taking more time to thoroughly read through some of the other sections. The warp drive was performing perfectly, although Lt. Commander El-Lachem had some ideas to make it work better than perfect. The only glitch seemed to be in the deflector systems. Taking a final sip of his coffee, he decided that there were some problems he needed to see in person.

There were four people in the main deflector control room and another on one of the side viewscreens when Kim entered. An eyebrow on the face on the viewscreen rose as the doors slid closed. "Captain Kim."

"Hey, Seven," Kim replied casually. At the sound of his captain's voice, Lt. Nenyaht also turned toward the door, an eyebrow similarly raised. "Nenyaht."

"Hey, Harry," he said, his eyes already back on his controls. "I called in a consultation."

"I can see that. Any luck?"

"No," Seven of Nine replied bluntly. "As I already explained to Nenyaht, I don't believe the problem is in the deflector. A more thorough inspection of the warp core is in order."

Kim barely stifled the impulse to grin. Some things would never change; Seven would never believe, much less admit, that the problem could be in one of her systems. "Anything I can help with?"

"I doubt you would be able to think of anything that we haven't already considered," Seven stated.

"I'm sure he'd more useful than I am," Lt. Marjorie Shin piped up from the back corner. She gave Kim a wide grin. "Hello, Captain. I'm cross-training today. Nenyaht has been showing me around deflector controls."

"I haven't been much of a tour guide," Nenyaht admitted before turning his attention back to the controls. "What about the subspace distortion?"

"What about it?" Shin asked with a frown.

"Deflector beams produce a great deal of subspace distortion," he explained. Turning toward the screen displaying his mother, he continued, "This deflector, does it produce any more or less distortion than previous designs?"

"For the size of the deflector dish, the distortion should be comparable to any other deflector array," she replied.

"Then it's probably not that," Nenyaht muttered, more to himself than anybody else. Suddenly brightening, he turned toward Shin. "Marjorie, run a diagnostic on the long-range sensor arrays."

"What are you thinking?" she asked as she started the test. Kim merely stood in the background and watched the events as they unfolded. Part of him still found it hard to believe that Nenyaht, the little boy who used stand in the background of Abbey and Joe Paris and grow frustrated as Icheb attempted to teach him how to play _kal'toh_, was now an expert in his field and respected leader, but from what he was seeing, that was exactly what had happened.

"The sensors are placed in a circular fashion around the deflector dish," Nenyaht explained as he handed a PADD to one of the engineering crewmen before moving to Shin's side to assist with the diagnostic. "This is both to reduce the interference from the subspace distortion and to send sensor data back to the deflector and to the warp core controls."

"So if the sensors are malfunctioning, the deflector and the warp core could be receiving erroneous information, which causes the instability while cloaked," she finished.

He flashed her a wide grin. "Exactly." Turning back to his mother, he said, "It's going to take awhile for these results to come back. Do you want me to let you know what I find?"

"Submit it in a report for Starfleet Engineering, and I'll get to it," Seven replied brusquely. She nodded briefly at the officers in the room. "Nenyaht, Captain, Lieutenant."

"See you later, Mom," Nenyaht said, giving a small wave toward the monitor as Seven signed off. As if just remembering that Kim was in the room, he turned back to his captain. "Sorry about that, Harry—Captain. Did you need something?"

"Actually, I was going to check on your progress with the deflector array, but it looks like you have things figured out."

"I hope so, anyway," Nenyaht replied. "I'm just disappointed I didn't think of it sooner. Between Mom's suggestions and my own, we had run diagnostics on just about every individual component of the system."

"He's been cooped up in here practically the entire time since we went to red alert," Lt. Shin added. She put on a slight pout. "I can't even convince him to join me in the Mess for meals."

Nenyaht's cheeks darkened ever so slightly in an embarrassed blush. "I've been eating," he replied defensively. "And sleeping. I just can't go and relax while I have this problem hanging over my head."

Kim nodded his understanding; he remembered a number of sleepless nights spent in the mess hall on _Voyager_ as he tried to reason himself through one problem or another. "Well, there's really no hurry. We're not scheduled to leave orbit for a few more days."

"A few more days?" Nenyaht repeated with a frown. "I thought the Nygleians were gone from the sector for good."

"We hope so. We _think_ so. Dr. Jackson and his team needed more time to take care of the casualties, and we can't very well just leave them there and come back for them later, so we're staying until they're ready."

Nenyaht glanced up briefly before turning his attention back to the computer console. There was a long pause before he said, "I see."

Kim frowned and shot Shin an uneasy look, not knowing what she knew and didn't know. If she picked up on the change in the room, she gave no indication. "She's fine, Nenyaht," he said in a low voice.

"I didn't say anything," the engineer replied, his voice carefully modulated. Having grown up with two parents who didn't express their emotions very well or very often, it didn't take much for Nenyaht to cover his own.

"Abbey's a good doctor and a strong person. You know that," Kim insisted.

"Do I?" Nenyaht asked, finally giving his captain his full attention. "And how would I know that? Do you know how many words we've said to each other in the last six years before we were both assigned to the _Kirk_? Let me tell you: none. So while you and Kathryn and everyone else who was on that damned ship forty years ago and can't seem to move on past that seems to think that Abbey and I have this deep, emotional connection, in reality, I don't even know her anymore. The Abbey Paris I remember was a nineteen-year-old girl who always had to have things her own way and overreacted whenever she couldn't. I don't know whether or not she's a 'good doctor' or a 'strong person' because I don't even _know_ her. So stop deflecting your own concerns onto me. If you need to hear yourself say that she's going to be fine in order for you to believe it, that's fine, just leave me out of it. I have work to do. Marjorie, is that diagnostic complete yet?" He turned his back on his commanding officer, letting him know without saying anything that the conversation was over. Kim continued to watch as Nenyaht explained the role of the sensors to Lt. Shin for a few moments before he quietly turned and left deflector controls, thinking about what Nenyaht had just said. Although he doubted that the young engineer wasn't worried about Abbey, he did have to admit that he had a point when he accused Kim of projecting his own concerns onto him. Not for the first time since hearing that Abbey would be assigned to the _Kirk_, he wondered if having a niece and uncle on the same ship was such a good idea. The hardest thing for him was going to be learning how to think of her as a Starfleet officer and not as a member of his family. He added that to the ever-lengthening list of things he needed to work on for this command.

---

Lt. Marjorie Shin silently watched the doors slide closed as Captain Harry Kim left deflector controls before returning her attention to the sensor diagnostic—or, more accurately, the tall, dark engineer scanning the results of the sensor diagnostic. Lt. Nenyaht's jaw was set, his hazel eyes fixed on the screen in front of him, his expression leaving no room for conversation.

She never was all that good at letting things by. "What was that about?"

He looked up, his expression unchanged. "Nothing," he replied brusquely before returning his attention to the computer console. He turned away and activated another monitor. "When that diagnostic is complete, make sure Commander Ontibile gets the results."

"You practically _dismissed_ the captain," Shin said, still fixated on what she had just witnessed. She had never been one of those junior officers to quiver in fear in the presence of a senior officer, but she did know her place, and telling off the commanding officer of a starship like that was _not_ that place.

"No, I dismissed Harry. Captain Kim had already left."

"What?"

He turned to face her, his face expressionless. "How often do you think a starship captain comes down to deflector controls to chat with the lieutenant on-duty about his niece?"

"Well, never," she admitted. He only raised an eyebrow in response and returned his attention to his work, but Shin wasn't done. "So then why did you dismiss _Harry?_"

He sighed deeply. "Do you have a large family?"

"I'm the second of seven children. Why?"

"Seven kids? Seriously?" he asked, distracted by that news before he remembered the point he was going to make. "Well, I'm an only child, but I'm from a family of about four hundred."

"And how does that work?"

"_Voyager_ wasn't just a ship, and its crew wasn't just a crew. They were a family, and for seven years, the only thing they had was each other. They were trapped on the other side of the galaxy, one hundred and fifty citizens of the Alpha and Beta quadrants on one ship, against the entire Delta quadrant. As I'm sure you could imagine, they became a rather unusual Starfleet crew—actually, they _started out_ as a rather unusual Starfleet crew. They weren't all Starfleet to begin with, but that's another issue. After seven years of that, when they got back to the Alpha quadrant and civilization as they thought they knew it, not everyone was able to fit back in, and they still stuck together. There is a huge reunion party every five years that everyone goes to, but there are also smaller ones—meaning anywhere from fifty to two hundred people—all the time. If you think that's close knit, it's nothing compared to the every day lives of the former senior officers. Kathryn had a townhouse in Nob Hill and the Doctor had a place in the Richmond District. Both of those were less than two kilometers from our neighborhood in the Marina District of San Francisco. The Parises lived two houses down the street, and when they were on Earth and before they inherited some land in Texas, Harry and his family lived about a block away. There were a few other former-_Voyager_ crewmembers and their families in the neighborhood as well. Growing up, we at each other's homes and on vacations with each other's families so often that there were times I forgot which set of parents were _my_ parents."

"That sounds very interesting, but I don't see how it answers my question," Shin said with a frown.

He sighed quietly. "It's really more long and complicated than we have time for, but here's the short version. Abbey Paris has a twin brother, Joe. They're two years younger than I am. Joe and I were always on the same parrises squares teams, Abbey took piano lessons from my mother, I got special engineering lessons from B'Elanna, Tom always invited me along on their family camping trips, and so on. From when my parents and I moved back to Earth when I was seven until I graduated from the Academy, the three of us were closer than most siblings."

"Then what happened?" she asked softly.

He snorted and shook his head slightly. "Who the hell knows? It was stupid. Not long before I graduated, she started dating a guy on my parrises squares team who I didn't have a very high opinion of. I tried to talk to her and said some things I didn't really mean, and she lost her temper the way only someone with Klingon blood can. Then I graduated and was shipped off on a research vessel for a two-year mission of some uncharted space in the Beta quadrant. I tried to write, but it was hard to figure out what I should say." He shrugged. "That was six years ago, and being on this ship together is the first time we've had any contact since. Harry and Kathryn and everyone seems to think that we'll just pick up right where we left off and be back to normal, but I don't see how. A lot has happened in six years. We're not the same people we were then." He gave a short chuckle. "Gods, I hope I'm not the same person I was when I was twenty-one."

"So what are you going to do now?"

He gave her a sarcastic smile. "Do you have any suggestions? Because I personally have no idea."


	27. Chapter 27

_Zeva system  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

*You're less than a meter away, Dr. Paris,* the voice of Lt. John Hoskins drifted over the comm system. *Do you see anything yet?*

"I see more debris," she muttered darkly, crouching to duck under yet another fallen beam. "Are you sure this has an end?"

*Soon,* he replied. *You have a large section with seats attached right in front of you, right?*

"Right," she confirmed.

*Your patient is right behind that.*

"So how do I get around it?" she asked, her eyes alternating between the tricorder and the rubble.

*There's an opening to your left. There's a lot of little stuff around the casualty. I hope you have enough room to work.*

"So do I," she muttered in reply, turning slightly to the left to see what she assumed was the small tunnel he was referring to. Using the beam above her head for balance, she gently slid her body into the opening. Righting herself on the other side, she found herself in an area identical to the ones she had been in for the last three hours, with the exception of the supine body in front of her. She gave a low Klingon curse as she quickly switched her tricorder from standard to medical mode, followed by, "Shit, shit, shit, shit."

*What is it, Paris?* Dr. Rex Jackson asked quickly.

"Is there a reason nobody told me about _this_?" she snapped.

*About what?* Lt. Hoskins interjected. She quickly scanned the patient, sending the data along the comm link. She heard Dr. Jackson's reaction, almost identical to her own, as he processed what she was seeing.

"Nobody told me she had a damn _pole_ through her chest!" she retorted angrily. "Damn it! It's going through her superior aorta. It's amazing that she hasn't—."

*Slow down, Paris!* Jackson snapped. *You're getting ahead of yourself. This is a trauma, just like any other trauma. Run your ABC's.*

"Right," she replied, straightening her posture the best she could in the confined space. She knew what to do in a trauma; she had done three trauma rotations in medical school. The first had been during her first year for her Injuries and Wound Healing rotation, the second in her third year for Advanced Topics in Surgery, and the final at the Starfleet hospital on Mars Station as part of her flight surgeon training. By the end of that third rotation, she had been running traumas, giving the orders for medications and treatments to the doctors and nurses. "Airway is patent," she began. "No obstructions. Breathing is shallow and tachypnic, about thirty breaths per minute. Normal Zevian respiratory rate is between sixteen and twenty-two breaths per minute. Chest wall movement is symmetrical, but there are three segments of the lung in the center that have collapsed, right around where that giant pole plunges into her chest. Oxygen saturation is seventy-eight percent. Maximal Zevian saturation is ninety-two percent; tissue damage begins around seventy-six to seventy-nine percent."

*But the breathing is stable?* Dr. Jackson asked.

"For now," she confirmed. "But she's not going to be able to breathe at thirty respirations a minute for long without getting tired."

*She's probably breathing fast because of the poor oxygenation,* Jackson pointed out, *which is probably a cardiac issue. C.*

"Circulation," Dr. Paris replied quickly. She closed her eyes for a second, remembering her readings on Zevian physiology. _The two-chambered heart is centrally located…_ "She's tachycardic, pulse is 168 beats per minute, normal is between seventy and one hundred twenty. Pulses are equal in the upper extremities, weaker in the lower extremities. Her right leg is pinned under a beam, and I'm not feeling a pulse in that foot. She is bleeding from several lacerations all over her body, but all appear to be superficial, no external hemorrhages, but I haven't exposed her completely yet. There is some internal bleeding, quite a lot, actually, but not surprising, considering the metal rod lodged in her superior aorta. The heart itself is structurally undamaged." She loosened the straps of her med kit, shrugging it off her shoulders and placing it on a somewhat stable surface. She opened it, removing a small disk. "I'm replacing her blood loss," she said, pressing the disk over her patient's ribs. It was a fluids replicator, scanning the patient's blood and replacing it with identical fluids. She had read in her History of Medicine course that humans once used isotonic saline injected directly into the veins for rehydration, resorting to donated blood from other people in cases of severe blood loss, hoping that the two people, donor and recipient, were similar enough not to cause a fatal immune reaction in the recipient. Based on those criteria, not even her own twin brother would have been able to donate blood to her. For as much as liked learning about history, she was glad she didn't have to live it.

"Lt. Hoskins," she said. "This pole?"

*Unfortunately, it's load-bearing,* he said, his voice apologetic, as if he arranged it that way. *If we beam it away, the whole structure collapses on top of you two.*

"Let's try to avoid that," she quipped. Deciding that the cardiac situation was stable for the moment, she quickly checked for neurologic disability, taking note of the cold right foot. Pulling a tiny phaser from her med kit, she cut away at the beam over the leg, revealing an open fracture and completely lacerated artery. The osteoregenerator and angioregenerator immediately went to work at the limb.

*Sounds like a good idea, Doctor,* Hoskins replied. *We're working on removing some of rubble resting on your beam without moving it.*

"Pick-up sticks," Paris muttered.

*Come again?*

"Pick-up sticks," she repeated, still working on the leg. "That was my first thought when I saw the wreckage. I used to play when I was a kid. I think it was my mother's idea of trying to train me to be an engineer. You remove one stick at a time, and if any others move, you lose."

*That's pretty much it,* Hoskins replied.

"Only in this case, if the pole going through her chest moves, she loses. I'm serious, Hoskins. A millimeter could cause her to exsangunate in seconds."

The engineer gave a low curse in response. *Can we beam her out?*

"Not unless you beam the pole with her," Paris replied. "Otherwise, you get one Zevian female with a hole in her chest. It wouldn't even take seconds before she loses all her blood. No, she's not going anywhere until this pole can go with her. Dr. Jackson, I've repaired the artery laceration and given a quick repair to the bone. It's not stable by any means, but it's not bleeding, either. Nerve function was compromised, but these are not the conditions for that kind of repair."

*I agree,* Dr. Jackson replied. *As long as the limb is perfused, we should be able to do the nerve repair here after transport. Any other neurologic injury?*

"Not that I can tell from here, but I can't exactly get her up to do a full neurologic exam," she replied dryly before returning her attention to the center of her patient's chest and the metal pole impaled in it. "Do we know her name?" she asked distractedly as she again activated the angioregenerator, this time to work on the torn superior aorta.

*We checked the DNA scan you sent us with the Zevian registry,* Dr. Jackson replied. *She's a local, name's Savin Colbee Peretal.*

"Kahless," Paris breathed, her hands stilled in surprise. "Her fiancée is my abdominal pain patient back at the field hospital. He kept asking me if we had any news about her." She looked down at her patient with a new understanding, no longer seeing just the small, dark blue woman with a metal bar in her chest, but the woman who joked about cheering for both teams in the championships, the woman who promised to love and marry the man Abbey had gotten to know over the last few days.

She straightened, reaching for her med kit with a new sense of purpose. "I'm getting you out of here," she promised softly. "You're getting out of here, you're going to be okay, and you're going to live a long and happy life with Anuj. I will make sure of that."


	28. Chapter 28

The progress on Savin Colbee Peretal's wounds was slow; there was only so much Abbey could do with a ten centimeter diameter pole sticking out of her patient's chest. She was receiving periodic updates from Lt. Hoskins and Dr. Jackson, acknowledging each with the minimum response required, the lines from the cardiology and pulmonary chapters of her Zevian physiology text occupying most of the space in her mind. _The two-chambered heart is centrally located in the upper abdomen, below the diaphragm but still protected by the rib cage. The lung, consisting of fifteen to twenty-one bronchial lobes, is located above the diaphragm. Oxygenated blood enters the right chamber of the heart from the superior vena cava; deoxygenated blood enters from below in the inferior vena cava. Oxygenated and deoxygenated blood mixes in the right chamber before it is pumped into the left chamber and out to the body. The superior aorta carries blood to the lungs, upper extremities, and head; the inferior aorta supplies the abdomen and lower extremities. Due to the mixing of blood…_

"I've patched the leak in the superior aorta the best I can without removing the pole," Dr. Paris reported, interrupting her own internal monolog. "Even with the fluids replicator, her oxygenation hasn't improved much. I'm starting to worry about tissue and end-organ damage here. I've already given her a hypo of tri-ox, but that doesn't seem to be doing much. She has some pneumothorax around the pole with complete collapse of three lobes. I'm going to see about getting some of that air out of her chest so those can re-expand," she reported, exchanging tools in her med kit.

*Even if you can reinflate the lobes and prevent recollapse with the tools you have, I'm not sure it's going to make much of a difference,* Dr. Jackson said from the other end of the comm link. *She still has fifteen of the eighteen lobes functioning properly.*

"Well, what else do you suggest?" Dr. Paris snapped in reply as she deftly inserted a small, stiff communicating duct into her patient's chest. It was a crude repair, one that wouldn't last, but the best she could do under the circumstances. "I can't definitively repair the superior aorta until we get that damned pole out of the way, and we can't do _that_ until Hoskins and his lackeys get their work done." She knew she'd have to apologize for that comment eventually, but at the moment she was too worked up to care.

*We're almost there,* Hoskins said, sounding slightly put out by her words. Her attention back on her patient, Paris ignored him. *Standby.* A few seconds later, the whole pile of rubble seemed to shake, dust and small debris falling onto Paris and Colbee. Reflexively, Abbey threw her body over that of her patient, protecting the small Zevian woman from the worst of the fragments. When she no longer felt the pieces falling on her, she pulled herself back into a sitting position before swearing loudly.

"_Damn_ it, Hoskins!" she snapped, letting loose with a few particularly vile Klingon phrases as she unceremoniously dropped the instrument she had been holding in order to reach for the laser scalpel. The shaking had moved the pole just enough to open all of Paris' repairs to the superior aorta and then some, sending blood spurting out of the wound. "I told you not to let that _Hu'tegh_ pole move! _Qu'vatlh!_" She continued her angry curses as she opened the skin around the pole, giving herself a larger area to use to repair the torn artery. The blue blood was now coming slower, less forcibly; the heart was beginning to weaken from the lack of oxygen and could barely keep up with the work of keeping the blood circulating. "_HoH_," Paris muttered, the angioregenerator again in her hand as she painstakingly repaired the torn layers of tissue.

*How are you doing over there, Paris?* Dr. Jackson asked, his voice tight with concern.

"How do you think I'm _Hu'tegh_ doing?" she snapped in reply. Forcing herself to take deep breaths in efforts to calm her frayed nerves, she tried that again. "The motion from that last redecorating job shook loose the pole. She's doing her best to bleed out."

*Just as long as you're doing your best to stop her,* Jackson replied.

"Oh, is that what I should be doing?" Paris muttered sarcastically.

*Good news, Doctor,* Lt. Hoskins chimed in. *The pole is no longer weight-bearing. We can beam it out.*

"Let's just hope we have a patient to beam with it," Paris replied. For the next half an hour, she wasn't sure if the comm link was silent or if she was just concentrating too hard to hear anything other than the recitation of the vasculature chapter of her Zevian physiology text in her head as she reconstructed the layers of the large muscular artery, slipping rapidly through the controls on the angioregenerator as she made her way millimeter by millimeter along the tear. "The artery is stable, for now," she finally said. "I constructed a vascular pouch. It's not a definitive repair by any means, but it should last long enough to transport her to the field hospital and get her in surgical stasis." She flipped open her tricorder and frowned. "Oxygen saturation is down to sixty-three percent. The fluid replicator is on the highest setting, but she lost so much blood that it can't keep up."

*Let's just hope that any damage done isn't permanent,* Jackson said bitterly. *How are we coming on transport?*

Dr. Paris pressed a hypospray of antibiotics to Colbee's neck before responding. "I think I can make it easier on everyone," she said, replacing the angioregenerator for that tiny phaser. "Hoskins, I hope that beam is as non-weight-bearing as you claim it is."

*What are you doing, Paris?* he asked wearily.

"I'm going to cut the pole," she replied, activating the phaser and watching the narrow beam slowly cut through the metal. "Are you watching? I don't want this to fall on me as soon as it's cut, so if you could beam it away before it does that, I'd really appreciate it."

*We have you covered, Doc, don't worry,* the engineer replied. She nodded slightly, only somewhat aware that he probably couldn't see that movement. Biting her lower lip and praying to whatever deity was paying attention that this wouldn't backfire on her, she kept her hand steady, the progress as it went through the pole agonizingly slow. Just as he promised, though, Lt. Hoskins beamed away the larger piece of the pole the instant the phaser beam made its way through to the other side, leaving a stub about twelve centimeters high sticking out from Savin Colbee Peretal's chest.

"Okay," Abbey finally said. "She's ready for transport. Beam her directly to the surgical stasis field, pole and all, as soon as Dr. Jackson is ready."

*All stations are go on this end,* the senior flight surgeon replied. *Good job, Abbey. We got this covered here. Stay over there and try to get to the others.*

"Aye," she replied, suddenly exhausted.

*One to beam over,* Jackson ordered. A second later, the dark blue woman and the stub of a pole sticking out of her chest shimmered out of existence.

Abbey closed her eyes, drawing deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying to suppress the sudden flow of adrenaline through her veins. _Not now, not now,_ she willed her body, trying to calm down. Against her wishes, her heart began to pound, her breathing becoming shallow. The space within the wreckage, always small, seemed to be closing in on her, her vision darkening. Suddenly, she could understand what her father was talking about when he tried to describe an attack of claustrophobia. "Get me out of here," she finally managed, clutching to the med kit as if it were a life preserver in a raging sea. "_Now!_" By this point in a full-blown panic attack, she didn't even register the familiar tingle of the transporter as it carried her away from the rubble.


	29. Chapter 29

Ensign Andrew Riker glanced up from his work in concern at the panic in Dr. Abbey Paris' voice as she requested a beam-out from the wreckage. His eyes fell on the table in the command center just in time to see the petite physician appear in a cloud of blue light. As soon as she fully materialized, she dropped the med kit she was clutching in her hand and sprinted away from the crowd.

"Why do they always run away?" Riker muttered to himself, less than ten seconds behind her, running as hard as he could to catch up. Although he considered himself to be in pretty good shape, he could see that despite the fact that his legs were probably a good thirty centimeters longer than hers, his Betazoid quarter had nothing on her Klingon quarter. He was pretty sure he wasn't gaining any ground; if anything, she seemed to be pulling away from him.

She finally came to a halt about half a kilometer away from the command table, her small chest heaving, not from the exertion of the run, but from the emotions that caused it in the first place. Although his empathic abilities were nothing compared to a full Betazoid, or even his half-Betazoid mother, he still had to steel himself to approach.

"Paris?" he asked tentatively. "Abbey? Are you alright?"

"Go away, Riker," she said between clenched teeth. As he got closer, he could see the tears streaming down her face. "I'm serious, Ensign. Leave me alone."

"No," he said, softly but firmly. She glared at him with a force that could melt duritanium before turning on her heels and stalking away. She walked a few meters before taking a seat on the top of a picnic-type table, her back still to the pilot. Riker blew an exasperated breath through pursed lips and glanced around, realizing for the first time that he was in a park of some sort. _Strange city,_ he mused, reflecting on the parks and stadiums in the middle of the metropolis, surrounded by tall skyscrapers.

He took a slow walk around the park, giving the doctor a few minutes to cool down before joining her on the tabletop. At some point in the rubble or in the run from it, her long braid had worked its way out of the knot at her neck and hung down her back, several loose locks falling around her face. Tears were no longer falling from her eyes, but he could still see the tracks they had made down her face. Her gaze was locked straight ahead, fixed on nothing, her mind obviously focused inward. "I told you to leave me alone, Ensign," she finally said, still not looking at him. "Doesn't anybody listen to a damned thing anyone says around here?"

He smiled slightly at her profanity and the fact that it was in Federation Standard, not Klingon as it was earlier. Like most teenaged boys, he spent a great deal of time learning to swear in a variety of languages, but the Klingon words that had come out of her mouth as she operated on Savin Colbee Peretal would have made even the most brazen of teenagers blush. "I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings as I followed you here. I think I'd get lost if I tried to find my way back alone."

She rolled her eyes at the obvious attempt to cheer her up and shivered slightly in the cool night air. Holding her arms tightly to her chest, she rubbed them vigorously as if trying to warm herself. "Here," Riker said, shrugging out of his red uniform top and draping it over her shoulders. It was large enough to wrap around her twice and long enough for her to use as a cocktail dress, but it would probably keep her warm.

"You're going to get cold," she protested, seeing that he was wearing only the standard light-weight black tee-shirt now. She tried to give the uniform top back to him, but he refused, shaking his head.

"Betazoids don't have as much problem with the cold as Klingons," he said. "Besides, I lived in Alaska growing up. Well, I lived in Alaska for the few weeks a year we weren't in space. This would be a balmy summer evening." She shivered involuntarily at the thought of such cold weather. Even growing up in San Francisco had been too cold for her. "I should make you pay for use of that jacket," Riker said after a pause. "Such as, dinner?"

She snorted derisively. "I told you, I don't date pilots."

"Well, luckily for me, I'm not really a pilot."

She arched an eyebrow, studying him out of the corner of her eye. "I should probably let Captain Lopez know that," she said dryly. "I'm sure he'd like to know that someone who isn't a pilot has been taking one of his fighters out for a ride."

He chuckled. "Okay, okay, so I'm a pilot _now_, but not one of those born and bred for the job pilots. I wasn't born in a Borg transwarp conduit between the Delta and Alpha quadrants or anything." She stiffened slightly at the mention of her older sister's birth, and he quickly continued before she had too much time to dwell on the fact that he knew intimate details of her family members' lives. "Flying and being a Starfleet officer is my second career," he explained. "I didn't want anything to do with Starfleet when I completed my secondary school studies. I went on to the University of Betazed, majored in music performance. After graduation, I played in a group on Risa for a couple of years. When the war started, I went back to school and into the flight program at the Academy."

"Music major, huh?" Paris repeated. "What did you play?"

"A little bit of everything," he said with a smile. "I started with the trumpet. My dad plays the trombone and loves jazz. I practically grew up in this holodeck program he had of some New Orleans bar. As I got older, I started playing through each of the positions in the band. The music department at UB has very strict proficiency requirements for performance majors. I had to perform recitals in two or three instruments from each class, as well as voice." He grinned. "And that is _definitely_ not my best instrument. What about you? What do you play?"

"What makes you think I play?"

Catching her by surprise, he grabbed her hand, studying her long, thin fingers. "These are definitely musician's hands," he observed.

"Piano," she said, snatching her hand back. "Since I was five."

"You still play?" She nodded. "We should get together sometime and jam," he said with a grin. "I know a great bar in New Orleans."

"You never give up, do you?" she asked in disbelief. She shivered again, pulling the large red uniform top tight.

"I'm very persistent," he agreed as she began rolling up the long sleeves of his uniform jacket to her wrists. "I've been told it's one of my best traits."

"You've been told wrong," she retorted. She released her braid, using her fingers to comb through the knots, causing dust and small slivers of wood to fall away before she quickly rebraided it and again tied it at the nape of her neck.

She suddenly stiffened, her eyes growing wide. "Paris to Kellogg," she said, tapping her combadge. "What's Saime's status?"

*Just a second, I'm in surgery with Jackson right now,* the physician replied over the comm link. A minute later, he said, *I just asked a medic. He's asleep now. He was complaining of pain and he has a standing order for pain meds, so the nurses gave him some more, and he was out a few minutes later.*

"Is he still tachycardic?" she asked, getting up from her seated position on the table.

*I assume so, Dr. Kellogg said. He's been tachycardic as long as I've been watching him. I assume it's a combination of his baseline and elevations from pain.*

She swore slightly under her breath, now walking briskly back toward the field hospital. Riker, sure that she had forgotten he was even there, got up to follow. "He's an athlete," Paris said. "He would be bradycardic, in any species' physiology. He needs to get to surgery. The pain is coming from his heart."

*His heart?* Kellogg asked, baffled. *The pain is in his abdomen.*

Paris was now jogging back toward the hospital, Riker still following from a safe distance. "I can't believe I didn't remember this until just now," she said. "I've been going over the textbook on Zevian physiology in my head. The heart is innervated by what translates as the vagal nerve. That's what controls the rhythm, but as far as pain, the heart is tied into the visceral fibers. Injury to the heart is received by the brain as referred pain to the abdomen in Zevians, much like a human would feel pain in the left shoulder."

Now it was Kellogg's turn to swear. *I can't believe I missed that. Shit. I can't step out of this surgery.*

"I don't want you to," Paris said. "I'm on my way over now. Get the medics to move him to a surgical field and have a nurse standing by to assist me. I want to start operating as soon as I arrive, which will be in about two minutes."

*He'll be ready,* Kellogg promised. *Good catch, Paris.*

"Let's hope it wasn't too late," the quarter-Klingon replied grimly. She signed off the comm link and picked up the pace.


	30. Chapter 30

_Zeva system  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

Lt. Marjorie Shin took a sip of her tea as she thumbed through the data on her PADD, oblivious to her surroundings in the engineering lounge as other officers and crewmen chatted about their work and gushed about the new ship's systems.

"Burning the midnight oil, Lieutenant?" She glanced up, wondering if the comment was directed at her, and saw Lt. Dwi Masters standing at the replicator, a questioning look on his face.

"Hardly," she replied with a small laugh. "I'm still planning our first round of experiments. If you're looking for someone who can't stop working, talk to Nenyaht. He's made deflector controls his new home."

Masters chuckled as he removed his coffee from the replicator and headed to the chair next to the small sofa on which Shin was seated. "I guess he hasn't changed, then," he commented. "He did the same thing at the Academy. He was always the first one done with his assignments, because as soon as we were given one, he didn't stop working on it until it was done."

Shin smiled thinly. "You and Nenyaht were friends at the Academy, right?"

Masters thought about that, shaking his head indecisively. "I don't know if I'd say we were _friends_, but we weren't on unfriendly terms. I think at the Academy, there were more people who said they were friends with him than he even noticed existed. Not the galaxy's most observant guy. Why are you asking?"

"Just curious," she said with a shrug. The corners of Masters' lips twitched slightly.

"Uh-huh," he replied. "You have a crush on him." His tone was almost accusatory, but she was starting to get the impression that that was part of his personality

"May-be," she said slowly, almost teasingly, her cheeks reddening slightly. "Besides, he's interesting."

"A lot of people are _interesting_," the half-Trill countered before giving a quick grin. "If you find someone _interesting_, what you should do is look up their personnel files. That's what I did, back at the Academy." He took a sip of his coffee. "And that's pretty much all I know about him. He doesn't socialize much. He's kind of hard to get to know. He doesn't pick up on social cues that well, either. I've seen girls practically throw themselves on him without him even noticing. If you want him to know that you find him _interesting_, you should probably go up to him and say so."

"You seem rather perceptive about such things for a member of a species that claims romance is an annoying hindrance," Shin teased.

"I'm only half Trill," he reminded her with another quick grin. "Humans seem to have an almost unhealthy interest in the subject."

"One of the many weaknesses of humanity," Shin joked. "But we weren't talking about that. Tell me about Nenyaht," Shin all but ordered.

Masters' first reply was a deep laugh. "You can't give me orders, I outrank you," he pointed out. "I'll tell you about Nenyaht when, and only when, I want to." He paused to take a sip of coffee, glancing around the room, making it look like he was going to change the subject. "Okay, I'm bored, so I guess I'll talk to you now. Like I said, I don't know much more than his personnel file. I know he's quiet, introverted, I guess, and like I said, not that observant when it comes to other people. He's more interested in his work than he is in the people around him. That's a product of his environment. His mom was Borg, perfection was their religion. Some of that must have rubbed off on him."

"Have you met her?"

"Seven of Nine? Yeah, I took one of her courses at the Academy. She's _intense_, and has absolutely no sense of humor. Nenyaht's father teaches at the Academy, too, but I didn't take any of his courses."

"Quite the family," Shin murmured.

He gave another deep laugh. "They're not just 'quite the family', they're Starfleet _elite_." He emphasized the last word with his voice and his eyebrows, his black spots almost retreating under his dark hair. "Nenyaht didn't do the _elite_ thing very well, though. I mean, if I were him and those were my parents, I wouldn't mess around working as hard as he does. People give you _everything_ when your parents are that famous."

Shin shrugged. "I think that says a lot about him, wanting to make a name for himself instead of just going with family recognition."

He snorted derisively. "Some way to make a name for himself, going into the same field as his mother and doing research in her lab. Maybe everything he supposedly did is actually _her_ work." Shin opened her mouth to protest, even though she had no way of knowing whether or not that could have been true, but Masters didn't give her the opportunity. "Do you know much about _Voyager_?"

"Just that it was Admiral Janeway's ship and that everyone Nenyaht knows is related to someone who served aboard," Shin replied, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm.

"Starfleet _elite_," Masters repeated, with the same emphasis. "So here's Nenyaht's story: his parents come back from the Delta quadrant, instant Starfleet legends. Chakotay gets promoted to captain. Doesn't get his own ship—no way a man with _his_ record gets a ship—but gets a top spot as a Starfleet archeologist or anthropologist or something. Seven of Nine gets some sort of research position. _She_ doesn't adjust so well to life on Earth or life as a celebrity or something and that's why the family moves to Vulcan when Nenyaht was a toddler. Few years later, they move back, maybe for someone's career, maybe to be closer to the rest of the _Voyager_ crew, who knows? Nenyaht doesn't take too well with all the attention, keeps himself as far out of the limelight as possible. Doesn't do a very good job of it—famous family, good grades, _really_ good parrises squares player. While we were at the Academy, he was written up in the sports section a number of times, called the best block in Starfleet _history_. He always seemed embarrassed by the attention, though. There are probably only a handful of people he ever opened up to, and _I_ was not one of them. Everything I just told you is _public knowledge_."

"Abbey Paris was one of those people he opened up to?" she asked, a little more bitterly than anticipated.

He grinned. He had a sister; he knew that when one girl was asking about another, it was rarely a good thing. "Oh, yeah," he emphasized. "They _grew up_ together. I don't know much about her, just that she was one of the Klingon twins. Quarter-Klingon, but when you talk about hybrids in Starfleet, people tend to focus on the non-human part. My dad's as human as they come, but I'm still 'that Trill engineer.'"

"Your spots are pretty dark," she commented.

"_Darker_ than most Trills," he pointed out. "Sometimes that happens with hybrids; you expect one thing and get something else, but that's not important. I was going to tell you about the Paris twins. Abbey was a gymnast, cute little blond thing, but not very smart. Nenyaht used to tutor her for her _intro_ engineering courses. If he didn't get in trouble for that, he _should_ have. Students are supposed to go to academic services and be assigned tutors, but he just did it on his own. Parrises squares practice and their tutoring sessions were the _only_ things that got Nenyaht out of the lab. The other twin, Joe, was on the parrises squares team with Nenyaht. Their team won _championships_ because of him. In his official record, he was the _perfect_ Starfleet cadet, but that just _wasn't true_. For the two years that I was at the Academy with them, the Paris twins had a _monopoly_ on school pranks, and they were _good_. They didn't mess around with mud coming out of the sonic shower or buckets of water falling on people's heads. They were much more elaborate."

"Nenyaht said that he and the Paris twins were like siblings." She tried not to sound jealous with those words, wondered if she was successful.

He shrugged. "I didn't see them around each other too much, but they grew up in the same fishbowl, had the same pressures of fame and family expectations and everything. The Parises are like Starfleet royalty, one of those legacy families. There's probably been at least one Paris in Starfleet since there's _been_ a Starfleet."

"That's a lot of pressure," Shin commented, thinking of her own family on New Devonshire. She knew all about familial expectations and doing the right thing; she just chose to ignore it. People used to shake their heads in wonder and whisper about her. _That Marjorie…_ She pushed the memory aside and focused on the current problem at hand.

Masters nodded as he drained his cup and got up to leave. "Fortune may have gone out of favor in the Federation, but I _doubt_ fame ever will," he said as he recycled the mug. "Anyway, I scheduled myself for Gamma shift, just for fun, so I should get going. If you want more information on Nenyaht or the Parises or anything else related to _Voyager_, let me know. I'm always interested in doing my part to help true love." He said that last part with a sarcastic roll of his eyes before giving her a quick wave as he left the engineering lounge.

Marjorie Shin had always been told that she was too curious for her own good, but she always waved away the warnings without a second thought. Thinking about what Masters had said about looking people up, she made her way back to her quarters where she positioned herself in front of her computer console. "Computer," she ordered, "display news articles regarding the crew of the _U.S.S. Voyager_, published in the last thirty years." Instantly, a list of thousands of articles appeared, drawing a quick breath of surprise from the bioengineer; apparently Masters was right, fame hadn't gone out of style. She got up and replicated herself another mug of tea before returning to her seat. It was going to be a long night.

---

A few hours after he left Lt. Shin in the engineering lounge, Lt. Dwi Masters, bearing a fresh cup of coffee, decided that it was time to get more familiar with the engineering department on his ship.

"A little bird told me I'd find you here," he said casually, leaning against the wall just inside main deflector controls. It was an impressive room, certainly much more impressive than any other deflector control station on any ship he had served on before.

Lt. Nenyaht glanced up from transferring data from a console to a PADD with a slightly wary expression on his face. "And what little bird was that?" he asked, moving onto the next station and repeating the procedure. "Admiral? Captain?" Gauging the reactions on his old classmate, he sighed. "Or lieutenant junior grade in a teal uniform?"

"That would be the one," Masters replied, taking a sip of his coffee. "She said you spend _all_ your time down here."

"She exaggerates," Nenyaht said. "She had a shift here earlier for cross-training and got that impression." He punched a few numbers on his PADD and glanced up to see the part Trill engineer giving him an amused look. "It's an exaggeration," he said emphatically. "I've had meals, even left for a few hours of sleep at some point. I think." He grinned to show that he was joking. "Anyway, what about you? Late night stroll around the ship?"

"Nah, I'm on duty," Masters replied, taking another sip of his coffee as he studied a nearby display. "What does this do?" he asked, pointing.

"Probably blow up half the ship," Nenyaht answered.

"Really?"

"No. If you're on duty, what are you doing here?"

The section chief of auxiliary controls shrugged. "I got bored. I saw that everything was going well, gave some motivation to my engineers, and got caught up on the news. I am _liking_ this section chief thing."

Nenyaht chuckled and shook his head slightly. "What exactly is it that you do?"

"Beats me. That's probably why I'm bored."

"Could have something to do with it."

Masters grinned. "Not all of us can be Federation-renowned experts in our fields, drawing upon the collective knowledge of billions of individuals."

Nenyaht raised an eyebrow questioningly. "My mother taught me. She didn't assimilate me."

"Isn't that what education is? Those who are older teaching those who are younger to think just like them?"

"That's deep."

"I know. Anyway, you should be _asking_ about why Shin and I were talking about you."

Nenyaht frowned at the sudden change of topic, vaguely remembering that that, as well as his highly opinionated manner, was normal for conversations with that particular former classmate. "I should?"

"Gods, you're dense," Masters said with a laugh. "Girls don't just start talking about a guy unless they're fishing for more information."

"I know _that_," Nenyaht replied, waving dismissively. "I'm not as unobservant as people would like to believe I am. She's not the first person to be asking my acquaintances about me, although it has dropped off significantly since I graduated from the Academy." At Master's puzzled expression, he explained, "I'm no longer playing parrises squares, and apparently, the lives of Starfleet officers aren't interesting enough to make the tabloids. Now, the only publications interested in me are the ones publishing my research, which is fine by me."

Masters raised his eyebrows. "Well, speaking of those tabloids and sports articles, I think I planted the idea of looking at those in Shin's head. If she's _half_ as diligent of a researcher as any other biomedical engineer I know, she's probably in her quarters pouring through a stack of them now."

Nenyaht shook his head and rolled his eyes as he handed a PADD to the ensign at one of the consoles. "I'm taking off, here are the instructions for the night. If you have any problems, contact the engineer on duty, which is probably Masters," he said, jerking his thumb toward the other engineer. "And if he can't handle it, which is fairly likely, he'll probably just wake me up."

"Aye, sir," the ensign replied, returning his attention to the console. Nenyaht headed toward the door, gesturing for Masters to follow him.

"Stacks of tabloids?" he asked, feigning disinterest. Masters wasn't fooled; he could tell that Nenyaht was intrigued by that piece of information.

"Oh, yeah. I think my favorite had to be the one right after graduation, the one about how you took the posting on the _Zenith_ because it was in the BQ and thus far away from Cadet Abbey Paris, who just dumped you for one of your parrises squares teammates."

"I think I missed that one," Nenyaht said thoughtfully. "Interesting how I got dumped by someone I never dated. No, my favorite was one right after I was born. It was in Federation News Weekly or something equally reputable. The article was probably between 'Elvis is really a member of the Q continuum' and 'Archeologists find evidence that humans from 16th century Roanoke Colony were teleported to Jupiter', but the cover picture was one of my baby pictures, doctored so I had Borg implants and a cybernetic arm or leg or something, with giant words saying, 'Borg Prince Born in San Francisco!'" He grinned. "I found that cover and article when I twelve or thirteen, printed it out and hung it in my bedroom. My mother got mad, told me to take it down."

"I hope you kept it," Masters stated, chuckling at the mental image of Seven of Nine's reaction to such an article.

"Oh, no, I did what my mother said and took it down," Nenyaht said seriously before grinning again. "And then hung it in my bedroom at my father's place."

"Nice." They had arrived at the auxiliary control center, just off main engineering. "Well, I should go back to work and make sure my engineers haven't blown out half the plasma relays or anything."

"Might be a good idea."

"Yeah. Hey, all joking aside, you _need_ to take Shin to the holodeck or something. She is _genuinely_ interested in you. I don't think she even knew that you were quasi-famous until I said something."

Nenyaht snorted, even though he knew Masters was right. "There's no way I'm taking relationship advice from anyone who was married to Pacheco."

Masters grimaced good-naturedly. "Don't try telling me you've never made a mistake, Nenyaht." He didn't even wait for a response before wishing the other engineer a good night and ducking into the auxiliary control center. He grinned to himself as he glanced around the space, seeing everything in order before heading for his tiny office to check out the latest gossip publications, his curiosity piqued by the recent conversation. This section chief thing was _definitely_ something he could get used to.


	31. Chapter 31

_Zeva system  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

Dr. Alex Kellogg stood just outside the sterile surgical field, his brow furrowed in concern as he watched Dr. Abbey Paris operate, her patient's chest splayed open, a surgical magnifier between her eyes and the dark blue heart she was operating on, an angioregenerator in her left hand and a deep tissue regenerator in her right. He wasn't concerned about her surgical technique; although he had watched her operate for the first time only a couple of days before, he knew she was more than competent, much more comfortable with her surgical tools than the average recent medical school graduate. His concerns were about the surgeon, not the patient.

"How's Colbee?" Paris asked, her eyes not leaving the minute muscle repairs she was making.

"We just finished," Kellogg replied, her question bringing him back to the present. "She's stable. We think she's going to make it, thanks to you." Paris murmured something unintelligible in reply, again focused on the surgery. "You're about half an hour away from Dr. Jackson's twenty-four hour restriction," he told her, which was really the reason he came over.

"Which means I have four and a half hours until my MOT," she replied, her eyes flickering from her patient to her colleague for a brief second.

"I can take over from here, if you want."

She shook her head slowly, her eyes not leaving the small area of ischemic heart tissue she was repairing. "No, thanks," she replied. "I should be done before my MOT is up. Did you know that before tissue regenerators, this type of repair wasn't even possible? If there was ischemic cardiac tissue, the only thing the doctors could do was give medications to reduce the afterload, monitor the patient, and hope they didn't perforate through the weak muscular wall."

"Thanks for the history lesson, Paris," Kellogg said, not even bothering to hide his smile. It was nice to see that, even with everything else, she was still able keep it light. "I still have ten hours of my MOT, it's really no problem taking over."

"I know Dr. Jackson said to try to keep it at less than twenty-four hours, but there is absolutely no reason for that," Paris argued. "Working within maximum operating times is evidence-based medicine; if anything, they're _too_ conservative. Human doctors, especially military doctors at war, used to work thirty to forty hours without a recovery period. The only reason Dr. Jackson wants me to work less than my MOT is because he views twenty-eight hours as an exceptionally long MOT and because I'm such a recent graduate. You can assist if you want, Kellogg, but I'm not leaving this surgical field until either my patient is stable or my MOT is up."

Kellogg sighed, knowing an argument would be a waste of his time and her attention. "Okay, Paris, that's your choice. I'll go see to the other patients. I'll be back in four hours if you're still working. If you finish before that, come find me to check out."

"Thanks," she replied, glancing up to shoot him a quick grin before her eyes returned to Saime's heart and the delicate fiber-by-fiber repairs required.

Two hours after her conversation with Dr. Kellogg, Paris was finally convinced that the Zevian's heart, while not quite in perfect condition, was as good as she or anyone else would be able to get it. She carefully deactivated the stasis field, watching as the blood began pumping through the heart again. "No leaks," she said with a satisfied nod, sharing a relieved grin with the nurse who had been assisting her. "Let's close him up." After everything they had done for the Zevian, returning his ribs to the proper position and using the dermal regenerator to erase any sign that they had been there seemed like everyday work. "Transfer him to post-op observation. I'm going to go check out to Dr. Kellogg; if anything happens until I'm back on duty, contact him."

"Sure," the nurse replied, punching commands into the biobed controls. "Good job, Dr. Paris." Abbey nodded in acknowledgement and went out to find Dr. Kellogg.

"I'm going to round on my patients, then I'll be back to check out," she said after she tracked him down in the ambulatory care area, repairing a medic's lacerated hand.

"Hold on a sec," he replied as he finished the dermal regeneration. "Why don't we round together and check out as we're going?"

She smiled thinly. "You really are eager to get me out of here, aren't you?"

He didn't return the smile. "You've had a pretty rough twenty-six hours." He gestured for her to lead the way. She scowled briefly at the reminder, but didn't say anything as she punched a few commands into her PADD and headed back to the recovery area to see her patients.

With the time she had spent going through the wreckage and operating on Anuj Saime Peretal, she hadn't had much time to pick up new patients, so rounds and check-out went fairly quickly. As she finished giving her final instructions to Dr. Kellogg, Dr. Jackson wandered over to the small lounge where they were sitting. "Recovery time, Dr. Paris?" he asked conversationally as he requested a mug of coffee from the replicator.

"I was just about to head out," Paris replied, trying not to let her annoyance at his stringent work hours restriction work into her voice.

"Get a little bit more sleep. Take a six hour recovery," he said. There was no hint as to it being an order in his voice, but Paris knew better than to think it was a suggestion. That didn't mean she was happy with it.

"Sir, I'm fine," she protested. "My MOT recovery is only four hours."

"I know," he replied. "But we're not as swamped as we were. Most of the cases we're getting now are non-critical, so there's no need to work ourselves to exhaustion. Besides, you've earned it. You did some good work today."

She frowned, knowing she was being mollified, but didn't say anything, just nodded tightly as she turned and walked out of the physician's lounge toward the rest tent, where she immediately kicked off her field boots and threw her uniform—including Ensign Riker's uniform top, which she had forgotten she was wearing—into the refresher. Still feeling the grime of her several hours working through the rubble, she stepped into the sonic shower for a cycle before replicating a PT uniform to sleep in. Any concerns she may have had about the horrors of her day keeping her awake were quickly alleviated; she was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

---

Thirty hour day-night cycles, inconsistent work with frequent breaks to tend to his injuries, and food being available whenever he wanted it were wreaking havoc on Ensign Andrew Riker's circadian rhythms; he had no idea if it was supposed to be day or night, if he was supposed to be sleeping or walking around, and no one was giving him any straight answers. When he asked Dr. Kellogg about it, the flight surgeon had smiled and told the pilot to do whatever his body felt like doing; if he thought he should be sleeping, he should take a nap; if he thought he should be eating, he should eat.

In other words, Dr. Kellogg had no idea, either.

Figuring that the medical personnel were all working on schedules that had nothing to do with sunrises or sunsets—or with each other's schedules, for that matter—Riker wasn't terribly surprised when he saw the slight form of Dr. Abbey Paris leaning against the trunk of a tree, a steaming cup of some likely-caffeinated drink at her side, attacking a plate of food balanced on her knees with gusto. Judging from her scrubbed-clean appearance and fresh uniform, she had recently woken up and was preparing for another day of work.

"I take it this is morning for you?" he asked lightly as he stood over her.

Distracted by her thoughts, she hadn't heard him approach, and jumped slightly at the sound, barely catching her plate before her food tumbled to the ground. "Something like that," she finally said. "Morning, mid-afternoon, it really makes no difference when you spend all your time up to your elbows in blood and gore."

"That's a pleasant meal-time thought," he said, making a face. She only shrugged and took a sip from her mug, which now that he was closer, could identify by the smell alone as raktajino. "What meal is this, anyway?"

"Breakfast," she replied, taking a bite and squinting over at him. "As you said, this is morning for me."

"Ah," he replied. "I thought you docs were all living off ration packs, the way I've seen you guys munching on those bars between surgeries."

"I woke up a bit early and didn't want Dr. Jackson to scold me about working too hard, so I decided to splurge on real food for the first time in however long I've been on this god-forsaken planet."

"And what _is_ it?"

She took another bite of her food, chewed, and swallowed. "Chocolate chip waffle with peanut butter on top."

He made a face. "That's disgusting."

"Hey, don't knock it until you've tried it."

He chuckled as she took another bite of her breakfast. A few hours of sleep, clean uniform, and some real food, and she was like a whole different person, which he pointed out. "You seem to be in a better mood this morning."

She raised an eyebrow and glanced at him sideways, her ridges shifting with the motion. "Is that what your Betazoid quarter is telling you?"

He grinned back. _Yeah, definitely in a better mood_. "Is that your Klingon quarter asking?" he shot back. She rolled her eyes and returned her attention to her waffle, but he thought he saw the barest hint of a smile there.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as she continued to eat her breakfast and drink her raktajino before she turned toward him again, "By the way, your uniform top is in the physicians rest tent."

He nodded, remembering that he wasn't wearing it, still not feeling chilled despite the fact he was still only wearing the short-sleeved black undershirt. "Okay, I'll try to go by and pick it up. I'm fine without it, though," he added. "When I help out with the engineering crews, they give me coveralls to wear, and the rest of the time, this is fine. Besides," he added, shooting her a wide grin, "you might need it again, and it looks better on you than it does on me."

She snorted and rolled her eyes as she took the last bite of her waffle, right before her tricorder beeped. "Time for me to get back to work," she announced. "Speaking of which, how's that head of yours?" Without waiting for a response, she removed the wand from the top of her tricorder, using it to scan around the circumference of his head before snapping the instrument closed. "Everything looks good. The swelling is down, and there's barely any hint of injury. If only you had a working shuttle, I'd clear you to fly."

"Guess you're stuck with me a little bit longer, then," he replied with a grin. "So, what does it take for a lowly pilot like me to get a surgeon's attention?"

"You did a pretty good job of it a few days ago," she said wryly as she recycled her dishes and utensils. Activating her PADD, she glanced up at him briefly. "Raktajino helps, extra strong to help me get through a twenty-four shift." She shot him a very quick grin before ducking inside the walls of the field hospital to start another day.

"Raktajino," Riker muttered to himself. "That, I can do." A passing crewman glanced at him curiously as he walked away, whistling a nonsense little tune to himself. _Brain damage and all, I like this little planet._ A mug of Klingon coffee in the middle of long hospital shift was hardly a date, but like he told her the night before, he was nothing if not persistent.


	32. Chapter 32

_Zeva system  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

_Captain's log, Stardate 87791.2:_

_We received word from Dr. Jackson on the surface that the medical situation on Zeva V is, while still far from ideal, no longer critical. Thanks to the engineering teams, with special help from the field-trained physicians, several Zevian hospitals that were destroyed by the Nygleian attacks are now operational, and the Zevian physicians are ready to resume full-time care of their patients. We're expecting our teams to be ready to return to the ship within the next four or five hours. All of this means that I finally had the pleasure of speaking to Colonel Jena of the Bajoran Militia and giving him an exact time of arrival. He assured me that Kejal Company will be ready for transfer to the _Kirk_ when we arrive. He also mentioned a transfer of command ceremony, which means I have some studying on Bajoran ceremonies to do before we arrive._

Captain Harry Kim leaned back in his ready room chair and sighed as he finished his log. He was glad to be finally getting back to his mission, but something was still bothering him.

He didn't have much time to ponder that thought before hearing the chime to his ready room door. "Come," he ordered distractedly.

Admiral Kathryn Janeway walked in, an impressed expression on her face. "Very nice," she said, looking around the space. "Larger than my office at Headquarters."

"No offense, Admiral, but I'm sure they planned on me spending more time here than you do in your office."

"If I had this view, I would change that," Janeway said thoughtfully, gazing out into the field of stars beyond. There was really nothing spectacular about it, but he knew what she was saying.

"You miss it, don't you?" he asked softly.

His former captain nodded slowly, her eyes not leaving the large viewport. "There are things I don't miss," she responded. "The battles, the wariness of strangers, the rationing of coffee." She said that last one with a thin smile. "But the exploration and the knowledge gained, the feeling of being the first to know something new; that made it all worth it." She walked over to the replicator, giving her former Ops officer a questioning glance, earning a nod in reply before she ordered two black coffees. "It was inevitable," she continued after taking a sip. "The promotion. It was all about timing—not timing in my career, by any means, but timing in the Federation. The Dominion War had just come to an end, everyone was rebuilding, and heroes—true heroes who would allow themselves to be thought of as such—were few and far between. And then we came home, unblemished by the events of the war, having achieved the impossible: enemies who came to _work _together and ended up _living_ together, making it seventy thousand light-years in seven years, our principles intact, remaining true to the ideals of peaceful exploration as we searched for a way home, and destroying the Borg in the process. If all of this had happened five years earlier or later, we would have been applauded, but not glorified the way we were. Starfleet, and the entire Federation, needed us then to remind us why we are out there and why we do what we do."

"I never wanted to be a hero," Kim protested.

Admiral Janeway smirked. "You played that hero card, Harry. We all did."

He sighed. "I certainly don't feel like a hero right now. I can't even accomplish my first mission as a starship captain."

She blinked in surprise and shook her head slowly. "No, Harry, you're doing your first mission perfectly."

"We'll be more than a week late for Bajor," he argued. "How is that perfect?"

"Going to Bajor and picking up the infantry unit is not your mission, not really," she explained. "You are the captain of the flagship of OFA—_Offense_ Force Alpha. Your mission, your _real_ mission, is to go out there and get to the Nygleians before they get to us. Everything else is secondary to that. It would have been nice if you could have gotten to Bajor and picked up the ground unit on time, but it would have been the biggest mistake of your career if you chose to do that instead of doing what you did, sending your ship and your crew to protect Zeva. What good is having a ground unit if you're not going to fighting the enemy?" She didn't give him a chance to say anything before continuing. "Do you remember the first time we decided not to detour on our way home and explore a nebula?"

"The first?" Kim asked with a smile. "No, I can't say that I do."

"Well, I do," Janeway declared. "I couldn't sleep well for a week, just thinking about the opportunity we passed up, about how Starfleet is about exploration and discoveries. After all, Captain Archer in the first _Enterprise_ spent extra time exploring the Arachnid Nebula, the proverbial stone's throw from Earth's doorstep. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was the right decision. There are millions of nebulae and other spatial anomalies between Ocampa and Earth, and if we stopped and explored each one, thinking that maybe this one will be different, will have something nobody's ever seen before, we'd still be fighting the Vidiians right now. Although we did have a mission to explore, we had a larger mission, and that was to get home."

Captain Kim sighed. "For the last four years, I have woken up every morning and focused only getting through that day, because that is all I could think about, and every night when I went to bed, I would only let myself think about what I had to do the next day when I woke up. I have lived from one short project to the next, one mission to the next, for four years, because I can't think about the future. I can't conceive of there being a future. You came to me and asked me to captain this ship, and I thought I could do it the same way I've been doing everything else for four years, but now I see that I can't. I can't do this mission to mission, because this mission doesn't end, this mission doesn't have an end." He shook his head slowly. "I don't know if I can do this, Admiral."

Janeway studied her former officer sympathetically. It didn't take much for Harry to get involved with a woman, but it always took a lot for him to get over her. She hadn't been as uninvolved as captain as some of her crew seemed to think; she knew about the girlfriend back on Earth he held on to for a couple of years, about the crushes he thought he kept secret, the Varro woman he became chemically bound to and refused medications to treat when their separation made him symptomatic. He met Naviana Torres three years after _Voyager_ returned to Earth, and fell so hard for the then-medical student that when her older half-sister, still reeling from the discovery that her father had another daughter, did her best to forbid Harry from seeing her, he stood up to B'Elanna, and told her that if she made him chose between the two Torres sisters, he would be choosing Navi. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. In the end, Libby had been hard for him to get over, and Derran painful, but they were just transitory. Navi was the woman he married, planned a future with, and raised a son with; Janeway didn't know if he would ever be able to get over that.

She stood, returning her empty mug to the replicator and watching the molecules disintegrate as it recycled before turning back to the new starship captain. "I still think you're the right man for the job, Harry, but I'm not going to force it. Think about it for a few days, and if you decide that it's not right, we can find someone else." She gave him a solemn nod before leaving the ready room. Right before the doors slid closed, she turned and saw him again seated at his desk, his head in his hands.


	33. Chapter 33

_Zeva system  
__Peretal, Zeva V_

Dr. Abbey Paris grinned widely as she approached her last two patients in the post-op ward. "Looks like you guys are finally getting rid of me," she announced. "Not that either of you two still need me, of course."

"We could never thank you enough for all that you have done for us, Dr. Paris," Anuj Saime Peretal replied, his eyes wide in an expression of honesty, making Paris chuckle. "You saved our lives." She opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted before anything could come out.

"Hey, Paris," Ensign Andrew Riker said, seeming to come from nowhere. "Kellogg sent me to tell you that the patients in the recovery ward have all been transferred to other hospitals."

"Good," she replied, smiling thinly over at him. "Thanks, Riker." He nodded in acknowledgement before ducking away. Dr. Paris turned back to her patients to see amused expressions on their faces. "What?"

"He likes you," Savin Colbee Peretal explained.

Paris waved that aside. "He'll get over it."

"He doesn't seem like a bad person," Saime pointed out.

"No," Paris agreed. "He seems rather nice, when he wants to be, but as I told him, I don't date pilots."

"You shouldn't generalize," Saime argued, somehow still making his words seem kind and thoughtful. "Not all pilots are the same."

She laughed at his words as she took a seat on the edge of Colbee's bed. "I know enough pilots to know that, generalization or not, it's a good rule to have. My father and my sister, and my sister's husband, are all pilots, and a lot of their friends are pilots, so I know a lot of pilots, and I know better than to date them."

"Why is that?" Colbee asked.

Paris shrugged a shoulder. "There are many reasons. They're cocky, always sure of themselves, and they always think they're right. They're usually quite charming, but like I said about Ensign Riker, only when they want to be." She paused, her expression becoming distant, remembering something from her past. "They're reckless, taking risks they don't have to, usually just for fun, and always because they're only thinking of themselves and never thinking about how much it would hurt other people if they get hurt." She flushed slightly as she came back to the present and realized what all she had said.

"You sound like you have some experience," Colbee said gently.

Paris nodded, brushing aside an imaginary lock of hair. "You can say that," she said, her words almost bitter. "Like I said, I know pilots, I was raised around them." She paused, then added, "I was engaged to a pilot once, so I really do know what it's like to date them. I know what it's like to suddenly be shoved aside when an opportunity to fly a new shuttle or try a new stunt comes up. I know what it's like to get a communication from the hospital saying that he's fine now, but he wrecked his craft earlier that night and broke both of his legs. I know what it's like to worry that he'll do something stupid and the next message I get from the hospital won't be telling me that it's okay."

"What happened to him, your fiancée?" Colbee asked.

"He died," Paris told her. "More than four years ago now."

"While he was flying?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. She looked away, then back at the two dark Zevians. "He was killed by the Nygleians when they attacked Earth. We were in Berlin, which is a city halfway across the world from Starfleet Academy. I was competing in the collegiate gymnastics championships, and he came to watch. He wasn't supposed to come until the next day, but his schedule was changed, and he wanted to see me compete, so he surprised me and showed up that morning. I was in the middle of a routine when the attacks started." She paused again, remembering. "They told me later that he died instantly, so I guess that's good, that he didn't suffer, but it's hard to find the silver lining when I know that the only reason he died was because I pouted about his schedule changing and complained that we don't ever spend time together."

She didn't miss the glance between Saime and Colbee, and didn't even pretend not to know what they were thinking. It wasn't hard to see the parallels between her attack and Jake's death four years before and their own attack a few days ago, with the injured athlete and the missing fiancée who was at the competition to offer support. She knew they were wondering how much of her intensity was her doing her job and how much was her trying to change the past, because she wondered the same thing. She didn't want to think about that.

She stood from Colbee's bed and offered her patients a stiff smile, hoping it didn't look like the grimace it felt like. "Anyway, what I come by to tell you is that you're both being discharged home, you don't need to be hospitalized any more. One of the physicians from Peretal, a cardiologist, would like to follow-up with both you, and you have appointments scheduled for two weeks from now. Any questions?"

The Zevians shared another look, Colbee giving Saime an encouraging glance. "Just one, Dr. Paris," he finally said. "I know my heart was damaged pretty badly, but I was wondering if I'll ever be able to compete again."

She blinked once at his words as she remembered asking the same question, lying in a hospital bed light-years away, less than a week after waking from a coma. The doctor, newly crowned as Starfleet's leading hybrid neurologist after the death of Dr. Naviana Torres, had looked away and muttered something incomprehensible until she lost her temper and demanded a straight answer. He told her then that, in no uncertain terms, her gymnastics days were over. "It's going to take some rehabilitation," Paris told him. "It won't be easy, and you're probably going to want to give up, but if you stick to it, you'll end up stronger than you were before. You're going to be able to do anything you want."


	34. Chapter 34: Conclusion, Part 1

_B'hava'el System  
__Tempasa Militia Base, Bajor_

Captain Bhan Larina had led troops into the face of battle more times than even she could remember, earning respect from soldiers and other officers alike for being a commander who didn't believe in sending anybody anywhere she wouldn't go, and went along more often than not. She looked into the unknown with a brave face, knowing that everything would work out in the end. She had a reputation for being completely unfazable, always wearing an expression of confidence. It was that same expression she wore as she stood in the parade grounds at Tempasa Militia Base in her stiff dress uniform, her company similarly dressed behind her.

Like most Bajoran ceremonies, the change of command ceremony began with a prayer, a long recitation from one of the Vedeks as Bhan and the rest of Kejal Company stood at parade rest. When he finished, a solemn silence fell over the parade grounds until the distinguished figure of Colonel Jena Kareen approached, which was Bhan's cue. Executing a tight turn, she took a deep breath, using her command voice to call the company to attention. As one, the five platoons of infantry soldiers snapped to attention and Captain Bhan turned tightly again to face the front at attention, and they all stood unwavering as Colonel Jena performed his final inspection of the troops, an action rooted in the historic pride of never turning over a unit to a new commander in anything but perfect condition.

When he was exactly halfway through the inspection, Bhan saw movement out of the corner of her eye: the approach of the Starfleet captain, Harry Kim, from the opposite direction Colonel Jena arrived, symbolizing the difference between coming and going. Captain Kim was distinguished in his own right, tall enough with a strong build for a man in his sixties, black hair liberally streaked with gray, lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and along his forehead. Bhan had read of him, knowing him to have a good reputation in Starfleet for being an efficient officer and commander. His career had an unconventional start: his first posting after graduating from the Academy had been as a senior officer aboard the _U.S.S. Voyager_, surviving the strange mission that that ended up being. After their return to the Alpha quadrant, he, like most of his crewmates, was promoted and decorated with just about every award Starfleet could make apply. For the next several years, he jumped from one prestigious posting to the next, serving as an operations officer, tactical officer, intelligence officer, and liaison officer of several ships and stations. His career became more stable after his marriage, eventually settling down as the commanding officer of Deep Space Four before his wife and son were killed in the first Nygleian attacks. After that, everything slowed to a near-standstill as he held brief positions with the sorts of titles Bhan recognized as belonging to those with once-promising careers who needed some time for their superior officers to decide what to do with them. Apparently, the top officers of Starfleet decided that Kim was ready to get back into the action, and named him the captain of the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_ for her maiden voyage.

Like Colonel Jena, Captain Kim inspected the soldiers, still standing stiffly at attention, not responding to anything going on around them, only the rustling of their grey dress uniforms in the slight breeze indicating that they were people, not statues. When both commanding officers had finished the inspection, they met up front and center of the parade field, facing Captain Bhan and Kejal Company from several meters in front of her. "Kejal Company, 7th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division," Colonel Jena boomed out. "As the commanding officer over this unit, I hereby transfer immediate oversight to Captain Harry Kim of the Federation's Starfleet, contingent with your deployment aboard the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_. Captain Bhan Larina, as commanding officer of this company, do you accept this charge?"

The petite blond raised her chin ever so slightly. "On behalf of Kejal Company, I accept this transfer," she replied, her eyes not moving from their unfixed position.

"Then, on this day, it shall be so," Colonel Jena declared. "May the prophets return you home safely when your mission is completed. Captain Kim." He indicated the Starfleet captain with a slight nod of his head.

Kim took a deep breath, hoping he was remembering the right words at this point. "On behalf of Starfleet and the _U.S.S. James T. Kirk_, I accept responsibility over Kejal Company, 7th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division of the Bajoran Militia, and I hope our partnership will be a long and successful one." He began to breathe a little easier when he saw Colonel Jena give a brusque nod, figuring that meant that he had done well enough. A few more shouted commands to the company later, the hundreds of soldiers and officers turned and began marching off the field. Kim watched, impressed; like all Academy cadets, he had to learn Drill and Ceremony and the proper marching forms, which were reinforced in his years in the marching band, but no group the Academy had ever produced could march in such perfect formation.

After the ceremony was the reception, complete with the Bajoran wine that Kim remembered from the few Bajoran weddings he attended to be very weak. He was in the middle of a glass of the wine and conversation with Commander Ed Nash about tactical strategies when saw Captain Bhan approach, flanked by two taller men, one about her age and one appearing well into his forties. "Captain Kim," Bhan said, with a slight nod. "I am sorry to interrupt, but I thought it prudent to introduce myself in person. Captain Bhan Larina."

"I'm glad you did," he replied, taking her offered hand. He was struck by how young and small she was; he had, of course, seen her in the change of command ceremony and read her file, but in both, she had seemed larger than life, as if her position of command added centimeters and years to her slight form. Now standing a meter away, he saw that she probably the same age as Abbey and maybe only a few centimeters taller. _Am I going to be spending this entire command surrounded by short blond girls with all of the confidence and none of the experience?_ There was a time, of course, that he would have been thrilled with the idea, but that was before he was a captain in his sixties with an entire starship in his command. "Captain Harry Kim. This is my first officer, Commander Ed Nash."

"It's nice to meet you," Nash added, offering his hand.

Bhan nodded. "And this is my executive officer, Lt. Ashani Waden, and my senior non-commissioned officer, First Sergeant Michalis Antos. Captain, I hate to pull you away from the reception, but may I have a word?" He nodded, gesturing for her to lead, and followed her into a garden path, noticing the absent way she touched one of the stone carvings as her lips moved soundlessly.

"I wanted to make sure we were in agreement about my role on your ship," she began, watching him out of the corner of her eye to gauge his reaction. "We have a one-year contract, but that's conditional. If I feel that my troops are being treated unfairly or sent out to the field simply because you feel that it's too dangerous for your own crew, I will not hesitate to break the contract and return my unit to Bajor. Colonel Jena agrees with this." He knew that she was well-connected in the Militia; it didn't take much research to discover that she was the daughter of the commanding general of the Militia Infantry; whether or not her position aboard the _Kirk_ had anything to do with that relationship, he had yet to see. "I am not under your command. I will listen to you out of respect for your position and experience, but in the end, I will do what is right for my soldiers."

He chuckled slightly, earning him a quizzical glance. "I've been hearing that a lot lately," he said dryly, but didn't explain further. "I'm going to be honest with you, Captain, and I ask the same from you. I'm not sure how this arrangement is going to work, and continuing with the honesty, I'm not that comfortable with someone equivalent in rank to a lieutenant thinking that she has as much say in what happens as I do. With that being said, I will do my best to make this work, because that's what I think is best for _my_ people."

She stopped walking and turned to face him, studying him briefly, her eyes narrowing. "I'm glad you realize that much," she said. "First real mission since the deaths of your wife and son after four years of Starfleet patting you on the back and telling you that it's all going to be okay. Are you up to doing your job and doing it well, or is this just a last-ditch effort to convince yourself and everyone around you that you're still a good captain?"

Now it was his turn to study her, his jaw set. "You do your job, Captain, and I'll do mine," he said tightly. "Outside of that, I don't see any reason for either of us to get into each other's business." He turned and left the gardens, fueled with an anger and determination he hadn't felt in awhile. Between his promise to Admiral Janeway—and himself—to stay with the _Kirk,_ and the Nygleians, he wasn't sure which would go first: his sanity, or his life.


	35. Chapter 35: Conclusion, Part 2

_B'hava'el System  
_U.S.S. James T. Kirk

The first thing Lt. Nenyaht noticed as the doors to Dr. Abbey Paris' quarters was the noise: deafening, discordant noise, complete with shouting about not being fine or not being okay or something. In the middle of the living space, surrounded by that noise, was Abbey, sitting cross-legged on the couch, looking relaxed in civilian clothes, a PADD in her hands, her sandy blond waves loose over her shoulders to end right at the bottom of her shoulder blades, the same length it had been since she was twelve. She said something as Nenyaht entered, her words lost in the sound of whatever it was she was listening to. He pointed to his ears and shook his head; her mouth moved again, and the music decreased to a reasonable level.

"What _is_ that?" Nenyaht asked, taking a seat on the chair.

"Music," Paris replied indignantly.

"That's a matter of opinion."

She grinned. "Late twentieth, early twenty-first century. Great stuff, lots of angst." She rolled her eyes slightly. "Not even Klingons could claim the level of animosity that was found among teenagers of that period. Colonel Green was a teenager around that time."

He searched his memory for that name, finally remembering the man who almost single-handedly started Earth's Third World War. "He might have gone to hear this band in concert."

She shrugged a shoulder. "I doubt it. This doesn't really seem like his style. I can't imagine this type of music being very popular among the radical environmentalist types." She shrugged again. "It just seemed to fit, though. I was in the mood for some angsty music." She paused, listening to the music for a second. "I think it needs the volume for the angst, though." He tried to think of how to respond to that, but before he could say anything, she made a face at him. "Don't look at me like that, Nate. I'm _fine_. Besides, the flight counselor beat you to the punch. I already had a two hours session with her today, and I have one hour a day for the foreseeable future. Nobody's letting me off the deep end any time soon."

He grinned at her choice of words and decided to let the subject go. He had heard about what she had done on the planet, but if she didn't want to talk about it with him, he wasn't going to make her. Nodding toward the PADD, he asked, "What are you working on?"

She glared briefly at the piece of equipment in her hands. "Letter to Joey, mostly yelling at him about the replicator."

He chuckled and pulled a small box out of his pocket. "That reminds me. I know it's a bit late, but happy birthday."

Her eyes brightened as she reached for the present, her excited expression replaced by one of confusion as she pulled out a small computer chip. "Uh, thanks?"

He grinned, taking the chip from her fingers and heading over to the replicator. A minute later, he straightened and ordered, "One raktajino with Vulcan chocolate and one black coffee." The two drinks shimmered into existence, with no complaints from the machine.

"That could be the best birthday present I've gotten in a long time, even if it is a month late," Paris said with a laugh as she accepted her drink. "I guess that means I need to take it easy on Joey."

"I wouldn't go that far," he said, deep dimples showing up in his cheeks with his wide smile. His expression sobered. "Listen, Abs—"

"Nate, we don't have to talk about this," she protested.

"Yes, we do," he said assertively. "We need to talk about this, because _I_ need to talk about this. I've missed you, Abs. I've missed talking to you, joking with you. Hell, I even miss getting in trouble just for being associated with you. I miss you, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the things I said. I had no right to tell you who you could or couldn't date."

"You're right. You didn't," she replied with a wry smile. She sighed. "I'm sorry, too. I said a lot of things I shouldn't have, like that the only reason you were mad was because you were jealous." She gave a crooked grin. "In my defense, nineteen-year-old girls can be pretty mean sometimes."

"Mean?" he asked with a joking smile. "You, the part-Klingon gymnast with a superiority complex, could never be mean." She smiled and rolled her eyes at his sarcasm. "Besides," he continued. "You didn't say anything that wasn't true."

She paused slightly at the admission, but then shook her head slightly. "It was stupid," she declared. "I let a cocky half-Bajoran corner come before a lifetime of friendship, and that was stupid. I shouldn't have done that." She paused again, her eyes not quite focused on the space in front of her. "It's weird. I miss him sometimes—Jake—but then there are days, weeks, months that go by when I don't think about him at all. Then when I do realize that it's been days, weeks, months, or whatever since I thought about him, and I feel guilty because I wasn't missing him. Sometimes, I try to think about what he was like, what he looked like, and I can't remember. I was going to _marry_ him, and I can't even remember what he looked like. Is that weird?"

He raised his eyebrows. "You're asking _me_ about what a normal emotional response would be? You _have_ met my parents, haven't you?" She smiled wryly. "Abbey, it's been more than four years. You can't expect yourself to mourn forever. Actually, I have something else for you." He got up again, crossing to the replicator and punching a few commands. "I know how you like to decorate, and I found this file in my things when I was packing my stuff from the _Enterprise_, so I thought I'd share. Maybe it'll help you remember."

The framed holo was a familiar one. Paris recognized the grey and black of the Academy's parrises squares uniforms and the red of Stanford's; the North American collegiate championships her sophomore year at the Academy. Stanford was the favorite, but in a surprise last-minute move, captured in the holo that made the front screen of the sports sections of news publications across the Federation, Academy freshman corner Ren Jacosi captured the ball, transferred it to sophomore point Joseph Paris, who pitched it past the Stanford block to take the lead and win the game. The holo was taken as the ball arched between Ren and Paris, a wide grin on Jake's face as he realized that his move might be successful, Joey watching the ball with concentration, Nenyaht, the senior captain, watching expectantly from his position as block. "Thanks, Nate," Abbey said softly. "This will have to go up on the wall. Now that I actually have a replicator, I'll have to put some thought into decorating."

"How about putting that thought off for a bit? It's about dinner time, and I don't have another shift until Alpha tomorrow."

She grimaced as she set the holo aside. "I would, Nate, but I already have plans." Just then, the announcer to her quarters chimed, revealing a tall, dark-haired man carrying what Nenyaht recognized from his time spent around the Kim family to be an instrument case of some sort. "Nate, this is Ensign Andrew Riker, one of the OFA pilots on Zeva. He has a New Orleans jazz program that he invited me to check out. Uh, Andrew, this is Lt. Nenyaht, one of the engineers. We grew up together."

"Nice to meet you," Riker said, extending his hand.

"Likewise," Nenyaht replied. The three stood in awkward silence for a minute before Paris spoke again.

"Well, the holodeck reservation is going to start soon, we should probably get going," she finally said. "Um, Nate…rain check?"

"Yeah," he finally said, watching her gather her PADDs and stack them on a corner of her coffee table before grabbing the PADD with her music programs. "Rain check." She flashed him a wide grin before following Riker out the door, leaving Nenyaht standing in her quarters alone.


End file.
